The most common street side snack of India and most favorite of all the Chaats, Pani Puri, Golgappa or Water Balls is so popular that you can find it in all the local street of various India sub-continents. In North India, it is widely called as Golgappa where in Mumbai, Maharasthra, It is called as Pani Puri, and Phulki in South Bihar.

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The name of this street snack vary from region to region, but the ingredients remain to be almost same that consists of round shaped, hollow friend and crisp puri filled with the mixture of delicious and sour flavored water (pani), chutney maid of tamarind, chaat masala, onion, chickpeas, chilli. The word Pani Puri “water bread” has organically derived from the Sanskrit language.

Golgappa/Pani Puri recipe

The Puri or Pooris are made up of flour or the sooji/wheat cream. They are thick in layer, crisp and fully puffed so that it could occupy the heavy filling and chutneys. One can either bring them from the shops or they could be made at home with little efforts. If you indeed want to make pooris/puri at home then here is a step by step process that you can follow.

The fillings of Golgappa and Pani Puri are different in all the regions or could also be customized as per your choice. You can prefer ragda or moong sprouts, boiled potatoes and onions. The choice of stuffing depends on taste.

Recipe for Pani or Spiced Water

The pani is tangy, spicy as well as sweet. You don’t need to make the sweet chutney additionally to get the sweetness. However, if you still want even sweeter taste then you can alongside prepare the sweet tamarind chutney to serve it with Pani Puri.

In order to make the sweet and spicy pani, make the green chutney with green chillis and mix it in water. Your spicy & sweet water is ready. Before you serve it, keep it in a refrigerator to get it chilled or add some ice cubes in water to foster its taste.

What you need to serve Pani Puri?

In order to serve Pani Puri to your guests, you need Puris as per the number of guests and the craving. Generally it works as the basic snack, but the taste and aroma is just irresistible so make sure that you keep an extra stock as well.  Afterwards prepare a few bowls of fillings like mashed potatoes, onion, sweet sauce, etc along with the water that needs to be chilled to have a better taste.

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While serving, make sure to take each puri, gently & make a large hole in its top middle side with a spoon or from your index finger or thumb for the proper stuffing. Then stuff it with the required items which you have prepared but ensure to leave some space to fill the water too. This is a very basic step by step process which you can follow to serve Pani Puri to your guests.

After this brief introduction, let’s have a quick overview of ingredients, cooking directions and the serving ideas…

Ingredients required:

• Get 1 cup of fine Sooji, Semolina or Rava
• Get 2 tablespoons of Maida
• Add some oil for taste
• 1/4 teaspoon of baking soda
• Oil for deep frying puri
• A small round-shaped lid to cut the puris

Cooking Directions

• Take Maida, Semolina, Baking Soda and mix it nicely in a big mouthed bowl
• Add water in small incremental quantities and truss stiff dough
• Take a wet cloth to cover it and keep it aside for 20-25 minutes
• After 20-25 minutes, take away the cloth and mold again until smooth texture
• Divide the dough into 4 equal portions, take each portion and give it a round shape, keep it between your palms, press it and press on the rolling board
• Roll it in a round shaped roti using a rolling pin with the thickness akin to chapatti/phulki or roti. Roll it in a medium size. It should neither be too thin nor thick.
• Take a small lid and make small round shaped puris out of this
• Keep aside the extra dough and use it later to make more puris by repeating the above process
• Heat the oil and deep fry all the small puris, make sure that they are crisp and puffed properly and get light golden brown color

Taste: It should be mild salty and crispy

Apart from Golgapps served with the spicy water, these puris could also be used for making various chaat recipes like dahi puri, pani puri, bhel puri etc.