Bhel Puri

Bhel puri belongs to a class of Indian street foods popularly known as chaat. A chaat food hits every element of the taste (sweet, sour and tangy) with a melange of flavors & textures. Indians across the world love chaats and bhel puri is one of the most loved by kids and grownups alike.

About Bhel Puri

Bhel puri is a popular Mumbai street food where crispy puffed rice is tossed with sweet tamarind chutney, spicy green chutney, hot pungent garlic chutney, onions, tomatoes, roasted peanuts, sev and chaat masala. Lastly it is garnished with coriander leaves, crunchy sev and crushed papdis.

There are numerous ways a bhel puri is made. The simplest being the dry bhel known as sukha bhel which is made with only one kind of chutney known as sukhi chutney/ dry chutney.

The more popular version known as geeli bhel is made with 2 to 3 basic kinds of chutneys which not only add zing and punch of flavours to the bhel puri but also turns it to a mouth-watering addictive snack.

More often you will find bhel puri made with just 2 chutneys – sweet tamarind chutney and spicy green chutney. The red chutney is just substituted with red chili powder. But actually it is this pungent red garlic chutney that transforms a normal bhel puri to the best.

You can also use the store bought sweet tamarind chutney if you have. But fresh green chutney makes a lot of difference so I insist you make it fresh and use up within a day or 2.

Green chutney provides heat so normally the heat level and the flavour of green chilies is more here than the green chutney we usually make to serve with snacks.

For this normally 2 kinds of green chillies are used for the flavour & heat, the spicy kind and the less spicy kind are combined. However you are free to add the regular green chutney like the way I used here.

Preparation for Bhel Puri Recipe

I always prefers serving fresh homemade foods to my family. So I make the chutneys all on the same day I intend to make the chaats. But I do refrigerate the left over tamarind & red chutney.

Use them up to make other kinds of chaat like Dahi vada, papdi chaat & aloo chaat.

So for convenience you can very well, make all the chutneys ahead and refrigerate. The recipe of chaat chutneys has been shared below. For detailed versions of the same you can check these posts on Tamarind chutney and Green chutney.

Next roast the peanuts and store them in a air tight jar to retain the crunch.

You can buy the puffed rice, papdis & sev from the Indian grocery stores just like the way I did. Locally made sev & papdis smell & taste fresh.

Just before you begin to make the bhel puri, chop the potato to half inch cubes. Boil them with water in a small pot. Alternately you may simply air fry them until golden and crisp. Meanwhile chop the onions, tomatoes, coriander leaves & green chilies.

Once the above preparation is done, you will finish making bhel puri under 5 mins.