Hara bhara kabab is an Indian starter, a green coloured tikki or patties, with peas, spinach (palak) as main ingredients.
The other binding ingredients are added too like other regular tikki/ kabab/ patties. I know this is Vj's favorite as I have seen him ordering this in restaurants. But never had an idea about the recipe.
He always insists me to try kababs at home. By which I tried gulnar seekh kebab and corn kebab. When I saw this recipe in Vj tv Venkatesh Bhat's show, I was so tempted to try.
Since the ingredients were there with me, I tried today and turned out yummy. Very easy to prepare and healthy too. Kids would love this for its color.
Even we can have it without any guilt of oil for tea time. I just made 4 out of the dough for this post and reserved the rest for evening snack for Aj and Vj. I am sure they would love this.
Top tip
While cooking potatoes or peas, if water is retained, then the texture of kabab will be too soft. For firm yet soft kababs, it is a must to cook potato and peas perfectly.
I like microwaving method as it's quick and give dry ingredients. Otherwise you can boil in open pot to have control over the degree more preceise.
If you are confident in pressure cooking just right, then you can go ahead and adapt the easiest way.
My notes
In case your kabab is too gooey and does not hold it shape at all, you can add more gram flour or even bread crumbs to make it firm.
You can deep fry, shallow fry or bake it. I tried grilling in oven too. I preheated in grill mode with a tray and placed greased kababs for 7 mins each side. If you want you can also bake at 220 deg C. The texture was crispy outside and soft inside.
Stepwise photos
1. Cook potatoes, I boiled it, you can pressure cook along with green peas for 2 whistles in medium flame. Wash and clean spinach. Remove the thick stalk part.
2. Boil water and add spinach along with sugar to it. Let it boil for a minute. Drain and wash with cold water to retain its green.
3. Drain the green peas (I microwaved frozen peas). Grind ginger, green chilli, palak, green peas to a paste. Make sure you drain/ squeeze everything without any water.
4. Crumble or grate the potato. Mix ground green paste, amchoor, garam masala powders, salt, gram flour.
5. Make equal sized balls out of it. Grease your hands with water to make sure its not sticky. Make patties and arrange.
6. Heat a tawa and drizzle some oil. Cook the kababs both sides to golden and crisp outside in medium flame or low flame.
I had Hara bhara kabab with tamarind dates chutney store bought. Any tangy curd based dip also can go well with this.
Recipe card
Hara bhara kabab recipe
Ingredients
- 2 Potato
- ¾ cup Green peas
- 2 cup Spinach Indian palak
- 2 Green chilli
- 1 Ginger
- 2 tablespoon Besan gram flour
- 1 teaspoon Garam masala powder
- 1 teaspoon Amchoor powder
- Salt
- ⅛ teaspoon Sugar
Instructions
- Cook potatoes, I boiled it, you can pressure cook along with green peas for 2 whistles in medium flame.
- Wash and clean spinach. Remove the thick stalk part.
- Boil water and add spinach along with sugar to it.
- Let it boil for a minute. Drain and wash with cold water to retain its green.
- Drain the green peas (I microwaved frozen peas).
- Grind ginger, green chilli, palak, green peas to a paste. Make sure you drain/ squeeze everything without any water.
- Crumble or grate the potato. Mix ground green paste, amchoor, garam masala powders, salt, gram flour.
- Make equal sized balls out of it. Grease your hands with water to make sure its not sticky.
- Make patties and arrange.
- Heat a tawa and drizzle some oil. Cook the kababs both sides to golden and crisp outside in medium flame or low flame.
Notes
- Never overcook potatoes or peas or palak as it will retain water and make the mixture gooey.
- Also do not mash potato too much. Just crumble it or grate it.
- Adding sugar to palak and washing with cold water ensures to retain its green color.
- In case its very sticky and gooey, you can add more besan but it may remain uncooked if you add too much.
- For crispy and tight kababs, make sure no water is retained in palak and spinach while grinding. You need not grind it smoothly as well.
Anu Anand says
Healthy and yummy.
Suchi Sm says
so tempting clicks raji.. very healthy I'm craving for this to have with a cup of hot coffee...
Deepika says
Hi Mam... Its looking yummy!!!!!! Planning to try this.. Is that amchoor powder is mandatory for this dish or can we replace this with anything else??
Aishwarya says
yummy. what brand of tamarind date chutney is good?
pavithra uk says
looks vry vry tempting.. such basic ingredients.. i m going to try it soon.. thanks a lot ma'm..!!!
Linsy Patel says
i still have to try this, looks yum
Meena says
Nice recipe Raks. Looks yummy and healthy. I can see this being used as a patty for making veggie burgers at home!!! i will try this and will send you the pic. That's the best way I can say THANK YOU to you for all your painstaking pictures and recipe with details.
Raks anand says
Something tangy for the dish. So replace with a lemon's juice
Raks anand says
🙂
Kalpana Sareesh says
delicious low cal kababs..
Shilpi verma says
Can I use baby spinach (WHAT YOU GET IN FAIR PRICE) instead of the indian variety
poornima natarajan says
Do you live in usa or india
Raks anand says
Yeah sure, I used that only 🙂
Raks anand says
Singapore
Raks anand says
This one is the first one I bought, so not sure which is better. What I bought is Ramdev
Jayanthi Sindhiya says
This comment has been removed by the author.
Jayanthi Sindhiya says
Beautiful Kababs!! Love the addition of amchoor powder
Deepika says
thank u so much for ur reply.. will try it out & send u the pic 🙂
Lakshmi says
What is amchoor powder? Btw r u a south indian?
Raks anand says
Dry Mango powder. Yes
Yogalaksmi harini says
Hi very tempting recipe..especially to try for kids who refuse to have spinach..shud v use only paalak keerai ir any other araikeerai/keeraithandu can be used? And how to microwave frozen peas..hiw long shud frozen peas be soaked b4 microwaving?thanks in advance :-)=0
Raks anand says
Any keerai should work, no need to use keerai thandy though. But palak has a smoothness which binds the kebab well. Which I doubt other keerai would have. Microwave peas need not be soaked before microwaving. Only dry peas should be soaked. The frozen peas pack should have its instruction to cook. Follow as per the instructions given in the pack.
Shankar P R says
Hello: I tried Hara Bhara Kabab recipe today and it came out good. My thanks and appreciations in making this available in your website.
Thanks
Shankar P R
Raks Anand says
Thank you so much