Seedai /Cheedais a savory snack made mainly with rice flour and urad dal powder during festivals or as a casual evening snack.
Uppu cheedai was my fav fried snack as a kid and I still enjoy it a lot with my coffee. This is customary to make this dish for festivities especially during Janmashtami. The smell of frying and butter and sweet smell surrounds the house.
Its flavor comes from grated coconut (optional) and sesame seeds. In our house its usually made without adding any spice, and I believe which is the typical way of making it, but one can add pepper powder or chili powder to make it a spicy cheedai.
Here I am sharing the proportions that has been passed down to me by my granddad that works very good for me one parts rice flour to 1/8 th part urad dal powder and butter. Sesame seeds, grated coconut and sat to taste.
Note: The rice flour is usually made by soaking rice in water for few hours and then air drying it till all the water is out. Then the rice is ground to a fine powder and sifted to get the rice flour. Here I have used the idiyappam flour which is the ready made version of the above style processed rice flour. Idiyappam flour works better for me than the regular rice flour.
In a pan dry roast 1/4th cup of urad dal to a golden brown color.
Once done let the dal come to room temperature before grinding it to a powder. Meanwhile….
Take 2 cups of rice flour and lightly fry it in the same pan. Make sure you do this in a very low flame and that the rice flour does not change color.
Once the flour is hot to touch remove it in a mixing bowl.
Now grind the urad dal in to a smooth flour. Sift it to remove the dal residue that is not ground properly.
Add 1/4th cup urad dal powder to the rice flour and add in the butter and mix it well.
Now roll the dough into small balls of almost size of cherry seeds.
Start frying the first cheedai batch. Make sure to fry it in the same temperature of for same color and crunch.
Make sure not to mix all the flour at the same time because the more it sits, more chances it will brown.
Use room temperature butter for good results.
If you plan to add coconut to the seedai, lightly fry the grated coconut to remove moisture. this avoids it form bursting.
Replace Butter with HOT OIL to make the vegan version. Add the hot oil to the rice flour mix to bring the mix to the same pie like consistency.