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Recipe: Benefits Big And Small – Beetroot Tikki

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Staying fit and staying healthy have always been important to me, and these are my mantras when it comes to cooking and eating. Especially today, when the importance of being very careful about what we put into our mouths has become widely understood. It all affects our bodies, and our health should always be our top priority. I have many friends who are still recovering from long COVID. It’s not that they were unhealthy to begin with, but this crisis has made us all more conscious about taking steps to boost our immune system. In my case, this has meant choosing to consume less sugar, while consuming more fibre and more protein.

Any dietary website you consult, whether you agree with it or not, will tell you that overdoing anything is the big risk. It is only vegetables that are exempt from this rule, which is why I put as much of them as I can into my cooking. Specifically, for today’s recipe, into my cutlets. I’ll share another variety soon, but to begin with, here are beetroot cutlets, also known as beetroot tikkis.

A tikki is essentially a sort of Indian cutlet. If you make these in a smaller size, they become great starters when accompanied with a green chutney, which always peps things up. In order to make it more filling, some paneer, potato or spinach are great additions. I have used paneer and potato in this version.

There are various ways to prepare the beetroot. You could grate the raw beet, then cook it or deep fry it. Or you could boil or steam it instead. Either way, it’s really delicious. Beets contain a lot of natural sugars, which help fulfil your body’s sugar cravings. This vegetable is also rich in fibre, potassium, folate, manganese and iron.

The idea of making beetroot tikkis came about because the concept kept popping up in different conversations. A few different friends I’d been visiting all talked about it. This was what inspired me to try out and share a recipe for myself. You know how it is sometimes – something keeps coming up repeatedly in one’s life, and once you notice the pattern you are almost compelled to explore it. Whether it’s something small, literally, like a cutlet, or something bigger – a question, a person, a place… There’s always some learning there, if we choose to find it. In this case, adding this recipe into my repertoire has been an enjoyable little learning indeed.

Beetroot Tikki

(Yield: 6 pieces)

 

1 cup raw grated beetroot

½ cup grated paneer

Salt to taste

½ teaspoon garam masala

½ teaspoon aamchur (mango powder)

½ teaspoon roasted cumin powder

1 teaspoon ginger-green chili paste

1 boiled potato

2 tablespoons bread crumbs

2-4 tablespoons oil for shallow frying

1 tablespoon extra bread crumbs for shallow frying

 

In a pan, sauté the grated beetroot on a medium to high flame until the water is cooked. Boil and mash the potato.

In a bowl, add sautéed beetroot, boiled and mashed potato, paneer and spices. Add the crumbs too.

Mix these ingredients together well with your hands and shape them into tikkis.

On a flat pan, add sufficient oil. Dip the cutlets into the extra bread crumbs and then place them on the pan. Allow to cook until golden, then flip over to the other side.

Your beetroot cutlets / tikkis are now ready to serve. They are usually eaten as a snack, with any dip of your choice. If you’re a fan of dishes like these, my sweet potato tikki and harra bhara kebab recipes may be fun to try out too. I have another cutlet recipe coming up soon on my blog. Stay tuned, and as always, I love hearing from you!

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Recipes

Recipe: Take Some More – Sweet Potato Tikki

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India has a wide variety of snacks that you could call tikkis, kebabs, tikkas and by other names. They are made with different key ingredients, and may be fried, grilled, skewered or served intact. All kinds are delicious, and usually quite filling too. I enjoy a range of vegetable-based tikkis and make them with sweet potatoes, regular potatoes, paneer, kidney beans, green peas and so on. The spices as well as the binding agent remain consistent, while the core vegetable can change. I also occasionally use a mix of vegetables. Among these many options, sweet potato tikkis have been a favourite at snack time in my house of late, so I thought that I’d share the recipe with you.

Do remember that you can use this recipe as a base, as mentioned, for other tikkis as well. While breadcrumbs work well, I have personally gone for either tapioca flour or oat flour as a binding agent when I make these. They are healthier options and taste very good too.

Sweet potato itself is of course the healthier version of the regular potato, though arguably just as delicious. Sweet potato is extremely nutritious, and is rich in antioxidants, beta-carotenes, fibre and vitamins. Did you know that just one sweet potato can boost your system with between 400% and 800% of your recommended daily intake of Vitamin A? True to its name, this is also a delicious vegetable with a hint of sweetness, and one that works in versatile ways. Just talking about it jogs my inspiration, and I think I’ll be using it as the star of some recipes I’ll share in the near future too.

Coming back to today’s recipe, the sweet potato tikki, I would like to add here that the dish itself is quite versatile. It is a healthy choice when you need a fast but satisfying snack, and is great as finger food to serve to guests. How you serve it can also be in a number of ways. You can make it in a chaat or street food-style, serving it plain with a nice dip or sauce. You can make it as part of a meal, accompanied by a salad. You can make it in a longish roll shape, which you then roll within a chapati or roti and tuck away in your tiffin box for a spill-free lunch at the office. One of my favourite methods is to make it as a patty, thus letting you turn a tikki into a vegetable burger. I learned this method while studying Macrobiotics, when a kidney bean patty that I found very similar to our Indian tikkis and kebabs was often used in burgers. In terms of the actual preparation itself, you may choose to deep fry the tikki. I have pan-fried it, to keep it healthier. I have not yet experimented with air-frying, but perhaps you could try that and let me know?

Sweet Potato Tikki

(Yield: Approximately 8 pieces)

 

2 cups sweet potato (mashed)

2 tablespoons finely chopped coriander leaves

1 heaped teaspoon garam masala

1 heaped teaspoon aamchur powder (or: a dash of lemon juice)

Salt to taste

¼ teaspoon black salt

2 tablespoons finely chopped onion

1 teaspoon ginger/green chili paste

3 tablespoons oats flour (or: tapioca flour)

¼ cup oil

Mash the sweet potato well. Add the coriander leaves and onion. Next, add all the spices and mix well with your fingers until they all come together.

Make small discs with the palm of your hand. Keep the tikkis in the fridge for at least half an hour.

Once they have cooled, heat a pan. Add oil, then place the tikkis on a medium flame. Watch that they don’t singe at the bottom. Lower the flame if necessary. Flip the tikkis gently and allow them to turn golden on both sides.

Your tikkis are now ready. Serve with green chutney or ketchup if they’re going to be a snack, or with a salad for a hearty meal. In fact, that reminds me of another way to kick up the sweet potato quotient in your diet, with this sweet potato and mango salad, especially with the fruit soon to be in season!

If you enjoy this recipe, you may also be a fan of the harra barra kebab, which uses green peas. That one lends itself especially well to being used as a burger patty. As always, I’d love to know what you think after you try these recipes out. Do leave a comment and let me know!

 

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