Nine stages sit between a sack of whole moth bean and a sealed 400 g packet. None of them are complicated. All of them are easy to cut short, and the taste is the first thing that tells on you when you do.
Bhujia is a short recipe made carefully, not a long recipe made fast. Here is the whole order of work before any of it is explained.
Whole moth bean and gram, by the sack, bought as grain rather than as flour.
Stones, husk and broken grain come out before anything reaches the mill.
Grain goes in whole and comes out as moth flour and gram flour on our own stones.
Seven of them, ground and weighed to the ratio the bhujia has always used.
Flour, spice, oil and water worked to a stiff dough that will hold a strand.
The dough goes through a perforated plate and falls straight into the oil.
Small kadhai loads. The strands set in seconds and come out the moment they colour.
Raked flat in wide steel trays so every strand loses its heat at the same rate.
400 g, sealed, then stamped with the batch, the date and the best before.
Moth bean and gram arrive whole. Ready-milled flour is cheaper and it arrives faster, and the moment you take it you have stopped knowing what is in your own bhujia. Everything before the mill is the part nobody tastes and everybody can tell.
Grain is spread thin and picked over before it is milled: stones out, husk out, broken and shrivelled grain out. One stone through the mill is a bad packet somebody opens two months later, and by then there is nothing to be done about it.
The cleaned grain goes on our own stones and comes back as moth flour and gram flour. Bhujia is a little under half moth flour, with gram flour behind it, so the grind is the texture. Too coarse and the strand breaks in the oil, too fine and it turns to paste.
Iodised salt, red chilli, ginger, black pepper, cardamom, clove and nutmeg, ground and weighed against the flour rather than thrown in by eye. The ratio has not been rewritten since 1965. Bhujia No. 3 is the one exception, and the only thing added to it is bishop's seed.
Flour, the spice mix, oil and water go into a wide steel parat and are worked until the dough is stiff, even and just short of dry. Slack dough falls through the plate in blobs and fries into knots. This is the stage done by feel, and the only one nobody has managed to write down.
The dough is pressed through a perforated plate held over the kadhai, so the strands form in the air and land in the oil already separated. Change the hole size and you have changed the product: the same dough makes fine Bikaneri Bhujia through one plate and Mota Bhujia through another.
Modest kadhai loads keep the oil from tiring and stop the temperature falling away when the dough hits it. It is slower than filling the vessel, and it is the difference between the first packet and the last tasting the same. The strands come out the moment they take colour, not after.
Fresh bhujia is raked into an even layer in wide trays, because a heap holds its own steam and goes soft in the middle. Once it is cool and dry it is weighed to 400 g, sealed, and stamped with the batch, the packing date and a best before four months out.
Fine, thick, and the one with bishop's seed in it. They share a flour, a spice ratio and a kadhai. The plate they are pressed through is most of what separates them.
The original. Thin strands that break clean and carry the spice on the outside, which is why it reads as the hottest of the three.
Same spice, wider cut, slower crunch. It holds its shape in a mixture instead of disappearing into it.
Bishop's seed goes into the dough. It is the only recipe change in the three, and it is the whole reason this one has its own name.
The whole declared list for Bikaneri Bhujia is moth flour, oil, gram flour and these seven. No masala base is bought in, and there is nothing in it that is not printed on the back of the packet.
Oil is changed on its condition, not on its cost. Tired oil is the fastest way to make a batch taste old on the day it was fried.
A full vessel fries more per hour and drops the oil temperature the moment the dough lands. The strands soak instead of setting. We take the slower number.
Milling our own grain is the slowest stage on this page and the easiest one to hand out. It is also the only way to answer a question about the flour with something other than a supplier's word.
Sealing is the only stage that leaves a written record, and it is the one that makes everything above it checkable. Every packet is stamped at the time of packing rather than pre-printed, so the batch code on the back points at one kadhai on one morning.
If a packet is ever wrong, that code is how we find which batch it came from and what else went out with it. It is also why the back of the pack is worth reading: the full ingredient list with percentages, nutrition per 100 g, the manufacturing address at Road No. 5 in Gangashahar, and the FSSAI licence.
The short answers, from the stages above.
Bikaneri bhujia is a fine-strand fried snack from Bikaner, in the desert north of Rajasthan. Ours is a dough of moth flour (47.5%) and gram flour (9%), spiced with seven ground spices, pressed through a perforated plate above the kadhai and fried in small loads.
Iodised salt, red chilli, ginger, black pepper, cardamom, clove and nutmeg, ground and weighed against the flour. The ratio has not been rewritten since 1965. Bhujia No. 3 is the one exception, and the only thing added to it is bishop's seed.
All three share one flour, one spice ratio and one kadhai. Bikaneri Bhujia is pressed through the fine plate, so its thin strands carry the spice on the outside and read as the hottest. Mota Bhujia goes through the wide plate: same spice, wider cut, slower crunch. Bhujia No. 3 has bishop's seed in the dough.
Yes. Moth bean and gram arrive whole, are cleaned and picked over, and are milled into moth flour and gram flour on our own stones in the same shed in Gangashahar, Bikaner.
Every packet carries a best before four months out, counted from the day it was fried rather than the day it shipped.
The batch code, the packing date and the best before are stamped at packing. The back also carries the full ingredient list with percentages, nutrition per 100 g, the manufacturing address at Road No. 5, Gangashahar, and the FSSAI licence, 12214017000716.
Start with 400 g of Bikaneri Bhujia. It is the recipe every other cut on this page came out of.
