How To Make Proper Crispy Onion Bhajis

These are onion bhajis, also known as onion pakoras. Absolutely beautiful, crisp, light spiced snack that you can just eat at any time. If you want to make them, here's everything you need. We are going to start this recipe with onions. I have got four red onions. You can use red or white, it depends on your flavour preference. If you want it slightly sharper, yet a little bit sweet, go for the red onions. If you want a milder flavour, go for the white onions. All I'm going to do is top and tail them, cut them in half and then thinly slice them. Once they're sliced up, I'm going to break up all the individual slices. This is going to keep the recipe nice and light with no thick cuts of onion in there. And then I'm going to place them into a mixing bowl. And then into the bowl, I'm going to place one teaspoon of turmeric, half a teaspoon of chilli powder. You can add more if you like it more spicy, or you can add none if you don't like it spicy at all. And one small green chilli that has been finely chopped. Now it's up to you how much chilli you want to add in. If you like it hot, add more. If you don't like any, don't add any at all. Next, we'll place in half a teaspoon of ground cumin, one teaspoon of ground coriander, and then a small handful of roughly chopped fresh coriander. Next, we're going to generously season with salt and squeeze in the juice of half a lemon. Mix well until everything is evenly distributed. So once it's all mixed, you should have a mixture that looks something like this. And now we're just going to leave that to stand for about 10 to 15 minutes, because what's going to happen is that salt and lemon juice that we added into there is going to draw out all the moisture out of the onion. And we're not going to add any more liquid into this mixture. The liquid that's going to be in there to create the batter that is going to make these beautiful crispy pakoras all comes from the onion itself as it draws it out. So we need to let that sit and do the work for about 10 to 15 minutes. We're essentially pickling it, a very light pickle, and then we'll come back to it in a minute. So as you can see now, the onions are very soft. And if we squeeze them in our hands, you don't need to do this, I'm just doing this to demonstrate. You can see all the moisture that is now coming out of them. So this tells me now it's ready to start adding our next ingredients. So we've got two ingredients left to add. The first one is bicarb, not too much, roughly around half a teaspoon. We're going to add that in, and what that does is it helps to create a nice light batter. Then after that, we're going to add in some gram flour. This is a chickpea flour, it's gluten-free. We're going to add it in gradually and just mix it, because we're going to do this on texture. We don't want it really thick and gloopy, but we want it nicely coating those onions. So just add a little bit at a time until it looks like this. So you can see there, the pieces are sticking together, yet they are not gloopy and really thick. Because when we fry this, we're going to drop them in, but keep the mixture nice and loose, and that way we end up with a nice sort of light pakora or onion bhaji. You know, the ones you often buy from the shops are like really pressed together and clumped, and they're a bit stodgy inside, and they're not very light. Everyone wants the nice crispy bits, so this is the way to go. So next we're going to heat up some oil to around 170 to 180 degrees Celsius. And once it's hot, we're going to take a small handful of our mixture, and then just sort of loosely drop it into the hot oil. These will only take two to three minutes to cook, and you can turn them around about halfway through. Don't overcrowd the pan, and it's best to do this in batches. Once cooked, place them on a wire rack to drain, or onto a plate lined with kitchen paper. And don't forget to season them with salt as soon as they come out. And then repeat until you've used up all of the mixture. So we've got more cooking there, but I just wanted to show you some of the ones that have come out. They're so light and crisp, and they're absolutely delicious. That's exactly how they should be, really light with every bite. So good, so good. So there you have it, proper crispy onion bhajis. These look so good, can't wait to try them. Mmm, you hear how crisp they are? You know, you're not biting into that stodgy sort of filling, you've just got crispiness all the way through. The flavour is really good, I could eat the whole lot. I hope you enjoyed this one. Thanks for watching, and I'll see you in the next video.