Sasmita The Pepper Sev is so crisp, flavourful snack for Diwali using besan, rice flour, and prominently flavored with black pepper. Also, this is a perfectly spicy and crunchy snack to serve with hot tea in the evening!
Sev !!
Sev, a very popular thin noodle-like savory Indian snack is made of gram flour (besan) and rice flour. Usually, these are flavored with carom seeds (ajwain) and hence this snack is popularly known as Oma podi in South India.
Apart from the ajwain flavor, one can make some other variety of sev by adding different flavorful ingredients such as spinach aka palak (palak sev), garlic (garlic sev), Milagu / pepper (pepper sev), potato (aloo sev) etc. These are so common in most Indian pantries. Sev is generally used to garnish a variety of chaats like the aloo chaat, bhel puri, sev puri, papdi chaat, ragda pattice etc.
Check some more Diwali snacks –
Pepper Sev :
The sev here has a strong flavor of black pepper. So simply crush some whole black peppercorns in mortar and pestle into a powder, then add to the dough mixture.
Pepper sev can get the size in superfine or medium-fine. So accordingly, just use the mold plates to make sev. Both ways it tastes delicious and all age groups would love this very much.
Actually, this sev preparation is so easy if one makes the dough consistency correctly.
How to make these sev –
In a mixing bowl sieve besan (gram flour) and rice flour well. Into that add freshly prepared pepper powder, turmeric powder, red chili powder, 1.5 tbsp hot oil, salt, and mix well using a spoon. By adding a little amount of water at a time, start mixing again. Soon, it will become a dough. Cover the bowl and keep it aside.
Meanwhile, heat oil in a deep pan for frying the sev. Now take the sev mold and grease all parts of it with oil. After this, take half of the dough and fill into the greased mold. Tighten the lid.
When the oil is hot enough over low-medium heat, press / rotate the sev mold handle so that the sev batter falls in hot oil. Once the batter touches the oil, start moving the mold in a circular motion along with pressing/rotating the sev mold handle. Handle this step very carefully, else there is a chance of burning to hand.
Once one circle forms, take out the mold and keep it aside. Fry the sev for 1 minute or less (as these cook so fast) and then flip it and allow to fry. When the sev seems light golden brown color from both the sides, then remove onto a plate lined with tissue paper.
Similarly, make sev from the rest of the dough and keep on the plate to cool down completely.
The sev becomes super crisp when cools down to room temperature.
💡 Tips to make perfect texture and flavor of pepper sev - • Rice flour gives the crunchiness to the sev, so DO NOT skip. Check here How To Make Homemade Rice Flour. • Always keep 2:1 ratio of besan (gram flour) to rice flour. • If rice flour is more, then sev becomes hard and whitish in colour whereas with more quantity of besan leads to strong yellowish colour with softer texture. • To make the dough, add water little by little. This amount totally depends on the quality of the besan and rice flour used. • The dough should be soft like chapati (roti) dough but not sticky. • Fry the sev over low-medium heat to get such a beautiful color of the sev as well as a good taste. • Use freshly crushed black pepper to get that extra flavor in the sev. • Try to make fine powder of the whole black pepper, so that these wont stuck while pressing the dough over the hot oil. • Red chilli powder is optional. Only add if you need little more spicy flavor in these pepper sev. • The sev can be prepared in huge batch and kept in air tight container for long time.
These sevs are quite popular fried snacks. Especially during festival seasons like Diwali, this type of snack is a must. Or even serve this up with some hot masala chai on the side and you have a delicious evening platter to enjoy!
📖 RECIPE CARD
Pepper Sev (Milagu Sev)
Ingredients
- 1 cup Besan (gram flour)
- ½ cup Rice flour
- 1 tbsp Black peppercorn
- ¼ tsp Turmeric powder
- ½ tsp Red chili powder (optional)
- 1½ tbsp Oil (hot)
- Salt as needed
- Water for kneading
- Oil for deep frying
Instructions
- In a mortar and pestle, first crush all the black peppercorns into powder and keep aside.
- Next in a mixing bowl sieve besan (gram flour) and rice flour well.
- Into that add freshly prepared pepper powder, turmeric powder, red chili powder, 1.5 tbsp hot oil, salt and mix well using a spoon.
- By adding little amount of water at a time, start mixing again.
- Soon, it will become a dough.
- Cover the bowl and keep aside.
- Meanwhile, heat oil in a deep pan for frying the sev.
- Now take the sev mold and grease all parts of it with oil.
- After this, take half of the dough and fill into the greased mold. Tighten the lid.
- When the oil is hot enough over low-medium heat, press / rotate the sev mold handle so that the sev batter falls in hot oil. Once the batter touches the oil, start moving the mold in circular motion along with pressing / rotating the sev mold handle. Handle this step very carefully, else there is chance of burning to hand.
- Once one circle forms, take out the mold and keep aside.
- Fry the sev for 1 minute or less (as these cook so fast) and then flip it and allow to fry.
- When the sev seems light golden brown color from both the sides, then remove onto a plate lines with tissue paper.
- Similarly make sev from rest of the dough and keep in the plate to cool down completely.
- The sev becomes super crisp when cools down to room temperature.
- Store these crunchy pepper sev in air-tight container and serve with tea / coffee or even as a yum snack !
Notes
- Rice flour gives crunchiness to the sev, so DO NOT skip.
- Always keep a 2:1 ratio of besan (gram flour) to rice flour.
- If rice flour is more, then sev becomes hard and whitish in color whereas with more quantity of besan leads to strong yellowish color with a softer texture.
- To make the dough, add water little by little. This amount totally depends on the quality of the besan and rice flour used.
- The dough should be soft like chapati (roti) dough but not sticky.
- Fry the sev over low-medium heat to get such a beautiful color of the sev as well as a good taste.
- Use freshly crushed black pepper to get that extra flavor in the sev.
- Try to make a fine powder of the whole black pepper, so that these won’t be stuck while pressing the dough over the hot oil.
- Red chili powder is optional. Only add if you need a little more spicy flavor in these pepper sev.
- The sev can be prepared in a huge batch and kept in an air-tight container for a long time.
I love the spicy pepper sev as evening snacks with hot Tea/Coffee. Homemade is always good so we can customize it according to our taste. Perfect recipe to try for the festival.
Pepper sev looks tasty and makes a good snack to store as a snack at home. The season is ideal to make this sev.
Wow Sasmita pepper sev looks so perfectly crispy crunchy spicy and delicious. Loved the use of freshly crushed black pepper. It will definitely give a wonderful flavour. I wish I could grab one from the picture.
‘Wow! Amzing pictures! The sev looks and sounds perfect. This is my dad’s favorite! I would love to make and send him!Thanks for the useful tips to make a perfect sev.
I love homemade sev. These are perfect with a cup of tea. Loved the idea of adding rice flour to besan to make the sev crisper. Would keep this in mind next time I make sev.
Pepper sev is a super addictive snack on any day. One of the snacks we make for Diwali. It looks so crisp z. So beautifully presented Sasmita.
Yumm yumm yumm . I can go on munching on pepper sev endlessly . I too make pepper sev this way . It tastes so yummy with hot tea