EspañolI always love a good challenge, and homemade papadums from scratch is something I’ve been wanting to try to make for quite some time, but they are made with urid flour, something that I couldn’t find here in Spain, even for ordering online.
Last spring I tried out the candida diet for a couple of months. I cut out most grains and sugar, and one of the things I relied on to get me through my snacky cravings was papadums. Unfortunately, the little Asian store where I bought them closed, and I could only find plain, boring, overpriced papadums at the supermarket.
I was determined to make my own, but, after some research, learned they were made with the flour from “urid lentils,” and I had no idea what they even were. I searched online for urid flour, but couldn’t find any that could be sent to me here in Spain for a reasonable cost.
I gave up on the idea for awhile until….
One day I was shopping in a new fruit and vegetable shop run by a Pakistani family, and found bags of urid “lentils” (aka. urad beans). They also had some papadums for sale (These very ones, actually), which I bought, of course, but I also bought some urid lentils for trying to make my own homemade papadums from scratch.
Having participated in the Wondermill grain mill challenge, I have a great grain mill for making flours, perfect for situations like this one. Ironically, most of the time it isn’t used for grains, and I tend to use it mostly for grain free flours.
I made my first batch of homemade papadums with the whole urid bean (lentil), but the peel changed their texture and made them a dark color. The dough was a bit difficult to work with, too, but I was getting the hang of it.
They were good, but weren’t what I was looking for.
One day when shopping at a new store, I came across some peeled lentils for sale. I decided to buy those to give making homemade papadums a try. If the urid beans are usually called urid lentils, how different could they be? Right?
Well, not so much.
I told a friend about my plans and she replied, “You know that you can peel your own lentils, right?”
“What!?!?”
I didn’t know what I was getting myself into, but I bought myself more urid lentils to give it a try. For some reason I decided that the whole urid would be easier to peel than the split urid (urid dal), so I bought those. (Next time, I’ll probably try the split ones!)
I soaked the urids overnight, and while it was true that you could easily rub the skins right off from the urids, I basically had to go one by one, and it was very time consuming.
Determined to come up with a better way, I smashed the urids just enough to split them and get many of them separated from their skins, and decided that I would rinse the skins off.
It worked, more or less, but still was time consuming because not all of the urids had separated well for their skins, and the skins didn’t float as well as I thought they would. I put the smashed urids in a jar of water, shaked them to help separate them from their skins, and then poured off the water and skins.
The skins didn’t float as well as I hoped, but the process still worked when done carefully because the urids themselves were kept inside by the lip of the jar when I poured the lighter skins off with the water. I repeated the process several times, and then took off the skins of the individual urids with remaining skins. It was easier, but still time consuming. I think that if I had begun with split urids, though, that it would have been much easier.
In any case I eventually ended up with a couple of cups of peeled urid, ready for drying and grinding into urid flour.
If you can find urid flour, or even just peeled urids, do yourself a huge favor and use those!
After I ground my two types of flour, I was (finally) ready to get started making homemade papadums.
Ingredients
- 2 cups urid flour
- 1/4 cup water
- 3/4 tsp. salt
- 1 tsp. whole cumin
- coconut oil (for kneading and possibly deep frying)
- freshly ground black pepper to taste
- garlic powder optional, to taste
Instructions
- Mix together all of your ingredients until the ingredients just come together. You want to end up with a stiff dough, so don't add in more water than you need to. You may want to adjust the dough for salt and other spices. I made my first batch with only salt and cumin, but then decided I wanted to add a bit more spice. I added garlic and black pepper to the next batch, but would love to try out more combinations next time. I think turmeric would be a great addition to these!
- Knead and pound on the dough for several minutes. At first the dough will be sticky, but as you knead and pound on it, it will start to come together. You can grease your hands and counter to help keep everything from sticking; I used coconut oil.
- Take sections of the dough and roll them out on the countertop almost as thinly as possible. I used a round cookie cutter to make circular shaped papadums and then took each individual dough circle and tried to roll it out even thinner. (I found it easier to do it that way than to try to roll out all of the dough paper thin.)
- Once you have your poppadum circles ready, you'll want to dry them out so that you can store them. If it's sunny and warm out, you can dry them in the sun. If not, you can use a dehydrator or your oven at its lowest temperature. I used my oven with the fan on, and they dried pretty quickly. As they were drying, I set them aside to make room for new papadums.
- You are now ready to either store your papadums in an airtight container, or prepare them for eating.
- To prepare your homemade papadums, you can broil them in the oven, puff them in the microwave or deep fry them. I tried all three methods, but my favorite was the deep fried ones. The deep fried papadums crisped up instantly in the hot oil, becoming light and crispy, much better than the ones from the store. The broiled and microwaved ones also crisped up quickly, but they weren't as light and flaky as the deep fried ones.
- I followed the process and made homemade papadums with both types of flour. The urid flour made something very similar to the store bought papadums, but better. The lentil flour made a lentil cracker that wasn't as light as the homemade papadums. They were also good, but I liked the papadums better.
- This is the homemade poppadom being compared with a store bought, larger poppadom. Even with as thin as I got mine, the store bought ones were slightly thinner. It didn't present a problem, though.
Would I make them again?
If I could get ahold of either peeled urids or urid flour, most definitely!
Once I had my flour made, the process of making homemade poppadums was actually quite simple, and I loved the results.
What didn’t I love so much?
Peeling all of the urid!!
I’m glad I did it because it was an adventure and a learning experience, but it’s not something that I’d choose to do every day.
Next time I’d love to try other spice combinations, like adding turmeric and maybe a bit of cayenne. Cumin is still my favorite addition to papadums, though!
I hope you’ll try making them and let me know how it goes!
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I pan-fried mine, but I can’t seem to get that restaurant style crunch, so I was a little disappointed. If I make them again I’ll try deep frying. This was definitely the easiest recipe I could find, thanks for sharing it with us. Still tasted good.
Thanks for the great post, I found it when googling if you can cook them in coconut oil.
Thanks, Juju.
And yes! You can definitely use coconut oil. 😉
You can also microwave them for about a minute.
I came across this site while searching for traditional Indian bread! Now I am a fan!!
I have to learn about all the different kinds of beans and how to use them.
Thanks for sharing.
Thanks, Zo!
I’m happy to hear it! 🙂
I want to try with some of the others, too. I’d imagine you can make a papadum of sorts from all sorts of different legumes.
Great job! Loved reading about this adventure. I live in a place that doesn’t have a lot of the same convenience items as my home country so I’ve learned to make all sorts of things from scratch. I read this recipe, went out to find the flour and unexpectedly found pappadums! So I won’t make them just yet but good to know this resource is available. Thanks again.
Hi Michelle,
Thanks. If you do give them a try, I hope they go well for you! 🙂
I have a couple of good Indian markets near me and the variety of beans and lentils is surpassed only by whatvthey are called!
Urad beans are also called black gram.
Urad means black gram means bean.
So far as I can tell, Dal is a peeled bean or lentil.
So on my journey to get this fine ingredient, I ended up with a bag of Urad Dal (split matpe beans) from a company called Swad. It is peeled, split Urad beans. I see it on AmaOn but it really expensive compared to the market.
I have been making Dosas with them mostly but as soon as I work out some good chutneys I plan to make papadam.
Thank you for your blog it will definitely Ben helpful for me in the journey and hopefully you can find a matpe or urad flour source soon.
Thanks so much for the info!
I hope it went well for you!
Tracy,
Thank you for this recipe. I’ve been looking for one for a while now.
I did find split Urid beans recently and ground them up in my spice mill. They are drying out as I type;)
Very easy to make, the rolling (to get thin enough) is a bit of a b$¥ch though. (As you mentioned)
I might try them next time and use my pasta roller (LOL)
Contrary to the notes, I did find I had to add a little extra water to pull it all together ([Tbs] ish). It may take a bit longer to dry out ….we shall see.
Two of mine are at university and coming home in three weeks. They can’t wait to try (huge curry family)—-guessing I better put some muscles on the rolling arms.
Thanks again. Popadum and lime pickle chutney here I come!
Hi Gerald,
I’ll have to try making these again. I have some split urid beans on hand now, and would like to make a video of the process for the blog. 🙂
I can’t remember how difficult it was anymore. I only remember the peeling part being horrible. Ha!
I’ll have to check on how much water I have to add this time around. Perhaps mine were more hydrated because of the peeling process. (Although I did need to dry them, so I’m not sure why it would differ.)
I hope they go well for you. I’m sure they’ll be delicious! Enjoy your family time. 🙂
What you are calling Urid looks like mung beans/mung dhal?
Hello Ivargas,
No, they aren’t exactly the same, but you are right- they definitely look the same. I have both at home. I can try to get a picture later on today.
I was actually going to try to make papadums with the mung beans, but haven’t gotten around to it yet.
Essentially the same thing. Urid lentils are also called urad dhal depending on the geographical location.
Hi, I tried to make this but it is not coming out the same way at all. I soaked the red lentils and grinded with vitamix. I used the ratio of flour to water but it barely mixed everything. It was still powdery and clumped little pieces, so I added more water. Then, I rolled it out so its about 1/16″ thick and put it in the oven. What came out was this hard chunk, no bubbling or crispiness. Am I doing something wrong?
Hi Michelle,
I never tried any of mine in the oven. That is probably your problem.
In the oven, you are making more of a cracker.
To get them to bubble and get crispy, you either need to deep fry them in oil or microwave them. I’m not sure why microwaving works to puff up papadums and also things like prawn crackers, but for some reason it does.
All of that said, I never got to experimenting with red lentils, so they may behave differently than the lentils I used too.
Hi! I shop buy my papadams (because I only just discovered this amazing recipe this evening) but I find if I dip the papadams into a bowl of water and put them in a really hot oven , say 250° they bubble up nicely. Not having a microwave and an aversion to deep frying means I really had to experiment there. But my husband does love a papadam so it was totally worth it
Hi Sophie,
Thank you for the awesome tip!
I’ll have to try that next time! 🙂
That is a lovely endeavour. Welldone for your determination and sharing with us! I would have given up at the urid peeling stage.
Su
Hahahaha, Susan,
Don’t think I didn’t consider it at some point in the peeling stage. 😉
Luckily I’m a bit stubborn (and curious).
Hello 🙂 do u know if i can use any other flour maybe wholegrain? I would really like to try them but i can’t find these urid flour :s
Hi Maria,
You can try to make something similar with another type of flour, just like I made some similar crackers with “regular” lentils, but they will really be just that, a different type of cracker and won’t be papadums. The lentils made a nice cracker, but they tasted a lot different from the papadums and the texture and everything was different.
I’m sure you could still make something interesting that tastes nice. You could also try grinding up a legume that you do have nearby and giving that a try. I’ve been meaning to try with chickpea flour but never got around to actually making them yet.