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Somewhere on a random food blog I found a reference to Chaat, a broad category of street snack food sold in India. There was a mention of puffed rice and various savory vegetables and spices, so I was interested. It turns out these puffed rice dishes are called Bhelpuri, or sometimes Churmuri, or by many other names. (A lot seems to depend on the flavor variations and ingredients used.)

My first thought was "does anybody puff brown rice?" which is another way of asking "can you get whole grain puffed rice?" My second thought was "Damn, I will probably have to buy that at Whole Foods, and it's going to be expensive." Sadly, the normal puffed rice product available in U.S. supermarkets is Rice Krispies brand and its many imitators, and that stuff has quite a bit of sugar and malt added.

Then about ten days later, I walked into a Big Lots (discount/overstock store) and found huge bags of puffed rice selling for a buck and a half apiece. Ingredient list, in its entirety: "Puffed whole grain brown rice." Woohoo! That's the stuff for me! I bought about six bags. They also had puffed whole grain kamut, so I bought some bags of that as well.

Now, where can I find a good Bhelpuri recipe that will work for us?

So I did a lot of Google searches. None of the recipes worked for me by themselves -- they used spices or condiments I don't have, they called for fried Indian snacks that are oily and that I cannot make or get, or they involved flavors I don't like (tamarind). But I quickly discerned that there are as many different Bhelpuri recipes as there are people who make it. So I took notes, jotted down some ingredients, and did some experiments. Eventually I created my own recipe that is healthy and that I like very much. It's not authentic Indian, it's something I made up after Googling lots of other recipes. But I want to share it.

Note well: There are two keys to making this stuff properly. First of all, you want to minimize the liquid in your vegetable ingredients, as these will make your puffed rice soggy before you can eat it. Second, although you can prepare the other ingredients the day before and refrigerate them, you really can't get away with stirring in the puffed rice until right before you are ready to eat. If you do, the rice will get soggy. The dish still tastes good after that, but it's very different and a lot less fun.

Ingredients:

1 medium tomato (I use a large Roma for low juice), diced
1 medium onion, diced fine (I like sweet red onions but any will do)
1 medium-to-large Jalepeno pepper, deseeded and minced
1/2 of a 15oz can garbonzo beans (chickpeas), well drained
1 medium or large mango, as ripe as possible, diced (see below)
~2 teaspoons lemon or lime juice (I usually use juice of 1/2 small lime)
1/2 teaspoon chili powder (or just to your taste)
1 teaspoon garam masala (see below)
1-2 tablespoons chopped fresh cilantro (if available)
Salt to taste. Do not over-salt. I keep using half a teaspoon and finding the dish too salty. You need a little salt to help mask any bitterness in your onions or hot pepper, but the primary flavor profile you're going for is sweet (from the mango) and savory (from the spices) but not salty.

When the above ingredients are prepared and mixed and you are ready to eat, stir in:

2 cups puffed whole grain brown rice (kamut is good too)

Serve, eat. I hope somebody enjoys this as much as I do!

A note about mango: I consider the diced ripe mango an essential ingredient of this recipe ... but good mangos can be hard to find sometimes. I've played around with substituting other fruits, because I don't enjoy this dish unless it has a hefty dose of fruit sweetness. A diced banana works for sweetness, but doesn't have the sharp acid fruity notes needed to balance out the onion and hot pepper. I've also used frozen berries, but they tend not to be sweet enough unless you cheat and sweeten them slightly when you thaw them before you add them in. I have not yet tried berries and banana in the same mix, but that's my plan for the next time I don't have a mango handy.

A note about garam masala: garam masala is a Hindi phrase that means something like "hot mixture" -- it's a prepared spice blend and no two of them that you can buy are alike. However, a strongly flavored common ingredient is cumin. The one I am currently using to make this Bhelpuri has a lot of what I think of as "holiday baked goods" spices, which contribute to sweetness and a dessert character to the dish: Sadaf brand "Garam Masala seasoning" containing cumin, coriander, chili, cinnamon, cloves, mustard, black pepper, nutmeg, and cardamom. If I didn't have the Garam masala, I'd probably substitute 1/2 tsp cumin, 1/4 tsp cinnamon, and 1/8 tsp each of clove and nutmeg.

This looks like a unique dish for sure! I think I can get puffed rice, and there is a Big Lots near me. Maybe it will be there (not always, eh?)

but do you nibble this as a finger food? or is it eaten out of a bowl with a spoon? Serving suggestions. You mentioned street food, so I picture finger foods, but seeing the recipe I can't imagine how it would work eaten out of hand...

I think once the current batch is gone from Big Lots it will be gone forever, but somebody I know saw some in at least one store as recently as last Friday. So it would be worth a check -- soon!

My understanding is that if you bought this from a street vendor in India, you might well get it served in a cone made from newspaper, and eat it with a little paper spoon or with bits of some sort of fried bread that's stiff enough to scoop it into your mouth with.

Me, I just eat it right out of the mixing bowl, with the same fork I used to stir in the puffed rice. Nom nom nom!

I gotta find me some garam masala. I almost out of my little jar. In fact, I just need to get to the Indian market in SLC...I think the Asian market in town doesn't carry much Indian stuff. Lots of Thai because the family who operates the store are from Thailand.

I'm definitely going to give this a try, SOON. Thanks for posting!

I have a ton of these recipes in the new Indian cookbook we have, but thanks for mentioning it here. This recipe is very unique.

I love reading your posts, Mixedgrains!

I can't wait to try it out.

Buns, you can make your own Garam Masala too, it is quite rewarding too (just don't toast cardamon, you will lose your mind opening all those little seeds...I just use the pre-ground stuff and toast all the other spices whole). You will need 1/2 of the fresh stuff than the store-bought stuff.

actually I was planning on looking up a garam masala recipe today. I have all the whole spices, but only about 1/4 tsp of the mix left.

I couldn't find puffed rice anywhere, but there were three smallish bags of puffed whole corn. I'll try it with that. Here's hoping it's delicious!

Hi MixedGrains,

I would like to congratulate you for being really quite enterprising!!

you are right! the traditional bhel or chaat is generally made with fried stuff mixed with the puffed rice. But just onion, tomato, lime juice and chillies mixed in with the puffed rice or churmura is good enough for a snack.

You have an interesting list of ingredients in your recipe..i am not sure how you came up with the ripe mango? Is it just because you like it( i love mangoes too)..but generally this type of dish uses raw mangoes, and sine they are quite tart, not a lot of them.

Another small thing I would like to suggest is the spice mix..try using chat masala instead of the garam masala for a true 'chaat' experience. this is readily available in any Indian grocery store in the US, and will last for a long time. Popular brands are Everest or MDH.This contains black salt which gives it a unique flavor, and might be an acquired taste..

I have seen black salt used in some vegan recipes for tofu scrambles etc.

I was going to post this question myself -- whether puffed rice is permissible..although I am not sure if the one I get in India is made from white rice or brown rice.

thanks!

Hey, KingBruce.

Regarding the mango, one of the recipes I found had mango in it, and I thought it sounded good. (That may have been the one that also called for tamarind chutney.) I'm not sure what you mean by "raw mango" or it being tart. I'm not cooking my mango, it's just that the mangoes in US supermarkets tend to be unripe when you buy them and ripen over the course of a week or ten days. The flavor doesn't change much during this time, they just become sweeter and softer and juicier, going in texture from something like an apple to something like a soft wet apricot.

Thanks for the tip about chaat masala -- I've never seen it but I've never looked. I don't have an Indian grocery within driving distance, but I'll bet there might be some at the huge pan-asian supermarket in the city.

As for white rice versus brown rice, I wouldn't worry about it unduly in this context. If you back-measure from the puffed product to the raw grain, we're only talking about maybe three tablespoons of grain in a whole batch of this stuff. Of course we would prefer to eat whole grain whenever possible, but on the question of rice I'm always mindful of Dr. McDougall's observations about his Asian patients who simply refused to eat brown rice for strong cultural reasons. It's from his FAQ where people ask "can I eat white rice" and his answer is "If you must" -- before he goes on to explain that his diet, with white rice, worked for people whose social prejudices against brown rice were too strong to overcome.

From that I take away the message that I'll choose brown rice at every opportunity, but I won't let a few tablespoons of white rice prevent me from making or enjoying an otherwise acceptable dish if that's the only product available.

'Raw' mangoes are a totally different thing altogether..and no, they are not what you get in Walmart/kroger etc. ( the mexican variety)

The mango fruit has an avatar ( if you will) before it ripens. This is called 'raw mango' or 'kairi' in India. This has a hard green skin and whitish flesh inside. The flesh inside is quite hard to cut, sort of like a hard squash variety maybe. It is extremely tart or sour and is used to make a huge variety of products such as pickles, chutneys, drinks etc. There is a big arm of the food industry that makes use of this. Almost every region/family has a different recipe for making pickles, chutneys etc. off this mango.

This mango later ripens. The skin becomes softer and yellow/orange, and the flesh inside also becomes soft and sweetens. There are certain varities that are preferred in a raw form, and some like the 'alphonso' which are famous for their heady flavor and are almost always eaten in a ripe form.

I am sorry if this is boring/tmi, but I couldn't hold back

I agree about what you say about the puffed part..

I don't know which state/metro area you live in, but these 'raw' mangoes are sold in Indian grocery stores when in season. It may be available in a frozen form too..You should try it if you ever come across it!!

Not boring at all! I like knowing more about exotic foods -- which mangoes surely are, around here.

I live in a very rural area, and indeed the closest Indian grocery story is half a day's drive away in another state. So I hadn't seen the unripe/raw mango anywhere.

Yeah, my Indian friends won't TOUCH the mangoes in US stores--they say they have no relation whatsoever to REAL mangoes. When they go home they eat mangoes and talk about it when they come back over here, LOL!

Interesting. I've not tried bhelpuri.

As for puffed brown rice, I've seen a few brands in the cereal section at Sprouts. I last bought Barbara's brand brown rice crisps for the bars I like to make sometimes. According to the label, it's sweetened with organic fruit juice concentrate, but it's not sweet tasting. The other ingredients are organic whole grain brown rice and sea salt. I noticed Sprouts started carrying puffed brown rice over in the bulk section too, but I haven't tried that yet. I didn't check its ingredients.

I think Kashi has a puffed 7 grain cereal. That might be a fun twist.

I like the combo taste of ripe mango, onion, and cilantro in mango salsa, so I'd probably like that in this. Someone mentioned chaat masala. I tried that (in something fruity I can't remember now) and didn't really like it much. It may have been the taste combo of fruit with the Indian black salt (tastes eggy) was too new/odd for me. Anyway, whatever it was, it just tasted "off" as I recall. Chaat masala has green mango or amchur in it, which adds a sour flavor. Chaat masala has a pretty broad flavor profile, with warm, sweet, hot, sour, smoky spices. Garam masala (at least the ones I've used) has a flavor profile that consists of mostly warm sweet spices.

I don't know if any of you have seen the videos put out by
show me the curry, but here's one for bhel puri that's interesting.
http://www.videojug.com/film/how-to-make-bhel-puri
They're using a bhel mix, but you could use plain puffed rice. (I think the bhel mix has sev, which I think is usually high in fat because it's fried.)

I saw this other recipe, for those who like potatoes in everything.
http://dinnercoop.cs.cmu.edu/dinnercoop ... /Bhel.html
(Again, sub something for the sev.) If you don't like tamarind, you could sub a different chutney or salsa or dressing with flavors you like.

Interesting links, thanks! And sure enough, the video link calls for raw mango, not the ripe stuff I've been using. But I enjoy these flavor combos, so I'll probably keep making it my way (though I'm very much going to look out for some chaat masala and some prepared chutneys if I ever find a store that sells 'em.)

I have been experimenting with making my own chutneys, but I have a lot to learn there.

I've never eaten raw mango, except as amchur, which is dried and powdered green mango. I can probably get green mango at the Asian market, but I don't know that I ever will. I'd probably just use a little amchur for a sour note, or lime juice like you did. I do like tamarind, though.

I've had fresh mangoes in Hawaii, from under the tree, as well as in Trinidad and I still look for acceptable varieties here. I have been intrigued by the "green mango" usage and this encouraged me to buy some harder, green mangoes. I've experimented and I do love those mango's! I even brought in one mango tree that started growing next to my compost pile (yes I dumped some mango pits there). I dunno whether or not I'll find a place to plant it someday but its next to my orchid, bromeliads and gardenia plants inside.

Thanks for the recipes and I need to get to the Indian markets SOON. I miss eating out at the local vegetarian Indian places, but they were high in fats. Now I'm looking forward to cooking some more of those favorites.