The Pepper Sev is so crisp, flavourful snack for Diwali using besan, rice flour, and prominently flavored with black pepper. Also, this is a perfectly spicy and crunchy snack to serve with hot tea in the evening!

Sev !!

Sev, a very popular thin noodle-like savory Indian snack is made of gram flour (besan) and rice flour. Usually, these are flavored with carom seeds (ajwain) and hence this snack is popularly known as Oma podi in South India.

Apart from the ajwain flavor, one can make some other variety of sev by adding different flavorful ingredients such as spinach aka palak (palak sev), garlic (garlic sev), Milagu / pepper (pepper sev), potato (aloo sev) etc. These are so common in most Indian pantries. Sev is generally used to garnish a variety of chaats like the aloo chaat, bhel puri, sev puri, papdi chaat, ragda pattice etc.

Check some more Diwali snacks –

Baked Spinach Murukku

Mint Rice flour Chakli

Pepper Sev :

The sev here has a strong flavor of black pepper. So simply crush some whole black peppercorns in mortar and pestle into a powder, then add to the dough mixture.

Pepper sev can get the size in superfine or medium-fine. So accordingly, just use the mold plates to make sev. Both ways it tastes delicious and all age groups would love this very much.

Actually, this sev preparation is so easy if one makes the dough consistency correctly.

How to make these sev –

In a mixing bowl sieve besan (gram flour) and rice flour well. Into that add freshly prepared pepper powder, turmeric powder, red chili powder, 1.5 tbsp hot oil, salt, and mix well using a spoon. By adding a little amount of water at a time, start mixing again. Soon, it will become a dough. Cover the bowl and keep it aside.

Meanwhile, heat oil in a deep pan for frying the sev. Now take the sev mold and grease all parts of it with oil. After this, take half of the dough and fill into the greased mold. Tighten the lid.

When the oil is hot enough over low-medium heat, press / rotate the sev mold handle so that the sev batter falls in hot oil. Once the batter touches the oil, start moving the mold in a circular motion along with pressing/rotating the sev mold handle. Handle this step very carefully, else there is a chance of burning to hand.

Once one circle forms, take out the mold and keep it aside. Fry the sev for 1 minute or less (as these cook so fast) and then flip it and allow to fry. When the sev seems light golden brown color from both the sides, then remove onto a plate lined with tissue paper.

Similarly, make sev from the rest of the dough and keep on the plate to cool down completely.

The sev becomes super crisp when cools down to room temperature.

💡 Tips to make perfect texture and flavor of pepper sev -

• Rice flour gives the crunchiness to the sev, so DO NOT skip. Check here How To Make Homemade Rice Flour.
• Always keep 2:1 ratio of besan (gram flour) to rice flour.
• If rice flour is more, then sev becomes hard and whitish in colour whereas with more quantity of besan leads to strong yellowish colour with softer texture.
• To make the dough, add water little by little. This amount totally depends on the quality of the besan and rice flour used.
• The dough should be soft like chapati (roti) dough but not sticky.
• Fry the sev over low-medium heat to get such a beautiful color of the sev as well as a good taste.
• Use freshly crushed black pepper to get that extra flavor in the sev.
• Try to make fine powder of the whole black pepper, so that these wont stuck while pressing the dough over the hot oil.
• Red chilli powder is optional. Only add if you need little more spicy flavor in these pepper sev.
• The sev can be prepared in huge batch and kept in air tight container for long time.

These sevs are quite popular fried snacks. Especially during festival seasons like Diwali, this type of snack is a must. Or even serve this up with some hot masala chai on the side and you have a delicious evening platter to enjoy!

📖 RECIPE CARD