Homemade urad dal flour is so handy during festival season like Diwali. Urad dal flour can be easily made at home and lets how to make it in this post.
Urad dal flour is available commercially at shops. But you can make your own with these easy steps.
Though I have shared this in other recipes on this site, as part of a recipe, wanted to share it as individual post. This may be handy as many of you must be gearing up for Diwali snacks preparation.
Ingredients
To make homemade urad dal flour, use the skinless dal (white urad dal / de-husked Black gram). I like to use whole urad dal and recommend the same.
Here's why whole urad dal is better than broken ones : While roasting, the whole urad dal moves freely around and gets roasted evenly than the broken ones.
I find broken ones gets browned faster especially in flat sides. So easily gets burnt. But not that you can't, just a suggestion for easy roasting.
Instructions
Heat a heavy bottomed pan firstly. Then set the flame to medium or low. Now, add urad dal to it.
2. Keep roasting for 5 mins approximately in medium or low flame itself.
The color will slightly start to change and if you taste one dal for checking it will be crisp to eat, not raw or chewy.
3. Transfer to a plate and cool down completely. Then place in a mixer jar.
4. Powder finely. Take care to give intervals in between to avoid over heating. Wipe the sides and grind again.
5. Once done transfer to a sieve (Salladai).
Sieve by shaking, not rubbing and forcing the flour through sieve. Because we need very fine flour.
6. Discard the coarse part or use it in other forms like sprinkling to poriyal or grinding along chutney.
7. Cool down and store in an airtight container.
Use it as when needed for recipes.
Hint: I like to use this Panasonic Mixie (affiliate link) for everyday use and grinding such homemade flours.
Storage
It keeps good for a month in shelf in a tight lid glass bottle. I usually keep it in fridge:
- In a bottle placed in fridge door or
- In ziploc placed in freezer.
Top tip
Never roast the dal in high flame as it will turn brown fast and this may affect the color of snacks as well as texture (it turns harder).
For urad dal ladoo, we fry deeper in shade as we need to cook the dal completely by roasting. But for homemade urad dal flour, which we are in turn using in recipes, we need not roast too deep. Just roast to make it crisp so that it can be easily powdered.
The urad dal flour texture should be like talc. Then only it will be used as binding agent in snacks like murukku. If it is coarse, then murukku may not look smooth (surface will have ridges kind) as well as it could break while squeezing.
So make sure to grind to a super fine flour!
Recipe card
Homemade urad dal flour
Equipments (Amazon Affiliate links)
Ingredients
- ½ cup Urad dal Whole (Skinless/ white)
Instructions
- Heat a heavy bottomed pan firstly. Then set the flame to medium or low. Now, add urad dal to it.
- Keep roasting for 5 mins approximately in medium or low flame itself.
- The color will slightly start to change and if you taste one dal for checking it will be crisp to eat, not raw or chewy.
- Transfer to a plate and cool down completely.
- Then place in a mixer jar.
- Powder finely. Take care to give intervals in between to avoid over heating. Wipe the sides and grind again.
- Once done transfer to a sieve (Salladai).
- Sieve by shaking, not rubbing and forcing the flour through sieve. Because we need very fine flour.
- Discard the coarse part or use it in other forms like sprinkling to poriyal or grinding along chutney.
- Cool down and store in an airtight container.
- Use it as when needed for recipes.
Video
Notes
- Never roast the dal in high flame as it will turn brown fast and this may affect the color of snacks as well as texture (it turns harder).
Urad dal flour recipes
Here are some recipes using urad dal flour:
Keith says
I want to have a go at making puppadoms and have a recipe that uses Urad dal flour. However, Icouldn't find the flour and was put off, but with your help, I can now give it a go.
Thanks
Raks Anand says
I think for pappadoms you have to use unroasted urad dal flour if I am not wrong.