Plant-Based Savory Pakoda Waffles Square
October 30, 2024

Savory Pakoda "Waffles"

Twinkling lights, delicious food, festive clothes, decked-up homes, and, most importantly, getting together with your loved ones is what Diwali is all about. The food spread for Diwali is dominated by snacks, and pakoda is one of the all-time favorite Diwali savory snacks.

Pakoda is a crispy Indian fritter, traditionally made with veggies like onions, potatoes, and spinach coated in a batter of lentil flour with spices. For our Plant-Based Whole30 Pakoda, we used a batter of mung beans, a type of lentil widely used in Indian cuisine. This fusion recipe uses traditional pakoda ingredients, cooked more conveniently in a waffle maker. Serve it with green chutney or Whole30-compatible ketchup and a hot cup of chai.

Some plant-based main courses that you can make for Diwali are tofu tikka masala or plant-based keema.

Tips and Tricks:

  • Yellow mung beans are mung beans that have their skin removed or hulled. Mung beans are a good source of plant-based protein. Soaking the mung beans makes them easier to digest and also grind into a better.
  • Carom seeds, also known as ajwain, are highly fragrant seeds with bitter notes and a strong flavor used in Indian cooking. They contain thymol, which can aid in digestion.
  • Do not use excess water while blending the soaked mung beans, as that will make the batter too thin. If your batter is thin, you can add 1-2 Tbsp of tapioca flour to thicken it
  • With 1 cup of mung beans, you can make batter for four large waffles. Ingredients can be halved to make two large waffles instead
Plant-Based Savory Pakoda Waffles

Savory Pakoda “Waffles”

Prep Time 20 minutes
Cook Time 10 minutes
Soaking time 1 hour
Total Time 1 hour 30 minutes

Ingredients  

  • 1 cup yellow mung beans
  • 1 serrano pepper
  • 1 in piece ginger root
  • 1 small onion
  • 1/2 small zucchini
  • 1 cup spinach
  • 1 tsp ground cumin
  • 1/2 tsp carrom seeds optional
  • 1.5 tsp salt
  • cooking oil spray

Equipment

  • Waffle iron

Instructions

  • SOAK mung beans in water for 1 hour. Discard the water after the soaking period is done.
  • CHOP onions and spinach.
  • GRATE zucchini, then press the grated zucchini between your palms to drain the water from it.
  • BLEND soaked mung beans along with the serrano pepper and ginger root. You can add a few teaspoons of water to make blending easier, but do not add excess water. Keep the consistency of the batter slightly coarse.
  • MIX batter with cumin powder, carrom seeds, and salt.
  • ADD chopped onions, chopped spinach, and grated zucchini to the batter and mix.
  • HEAT a waffle maker and spray both sides with oil.
  • COOK approximately 1/4 of the batter in the waffle maker for 10 minutes to get one large waffle. Continue to make additional waffles till all the batter is used.
  • CUT waffles into 4 wedges and serve with green chutney or Whole30 compatible ketchup.
Pri and Dee from Masala Paleo

Priya Anavarathan and Deepshikha Ganjoo | Masala Paleo

Masala Paleo is the brainchild of Priya Anavarathan and Deepshikha Ganjoo, also known as Pri and Dee! We met virtually through a health and fitness community on Facebook and now we both are part of the amazing team that leads and runs the group. Spreading the love for fitness and nutrition to women in our community is a passion we feel very strongly about. We both ended up trying the Whole30 in our journey to heal our bodies through food. One suffering from PCOS while the other with an autoimmune disease called Hashimotos, we started being our own advocates and exploring how certain foods were affecting our bodies. The Whole 30 was an eye opening experience for us, and made us realize that eliminating certain foods from our diet helped us heal in ways that actual medicines couldn’t. Now we both are strong advocates of this food philosophy. Indian food is our soul food, so we have experimented and learnt how to make our soul food Whole 30 compatible. Through our food freedom, we also focus on gluten free Indian Food. During our Whole30, we realized there were very few resources out there for Whole30 India and Gluten Free food, so we decided to share what we learnt out through a lot of experimentation with you all. With Dee being from the very north of India and Pri being from the very south, we cover Indian recipes from Kashmir to Kanyakumari and everything in between. If you thought Whole30 Indian recipes were limited to just chicken tikka masala, you are in for a treat !