Baked Bitter Gourd Chips ~ Indian Fritters

I prefer cooking Bitter Gourd at least once in a week just for its health benefits and we do not hate his bittery vegetable much. It has been a long time wish of mine to bake bitter gourd. But due to lack of time (or lazy me), I was just preparing either stir fry or deep fry with bitter gourd. This time I compulsorily made myself free to bake this gourd. It came out as crispy as deep fried ones.

Adapted from here.

Ingredients:

Bitter Gourd 2 Long
Chilli Powder 1/2 tsp
Sambar Powder 1/4 tsp
Rice Flour 1/2 tsp
Ginger Garlic Paste 1/8 tsp
Salt
Oil 3 tbsp

Preparation:

Cut Bitter gourd into thin dics. (not very thin).

In a bowl, add tamarind and little salt. Crush tamarind to extract its pulp. Do this for few times so that all pulp is extracted. Add sliced bitter gourd. Allow soaking for at least for an hour. This is done to reduce the bitterness of the vegetable. 

Remove the slices. Drain and then add Ginger Garlic paste, Chilli Powder, Sambar Powder, Rice Flour and Salt. Mix well and keep it aside for at least ten minutes. Segregate the thinner and thicker discs separately. The middle of the bitter gourd is slightly thicker.

Pre heat the oven at 180 deg C for 10 minutes.

Line a baking sheet in the baking tray. Arrange the slices with little space in between.

Now bake it for 15 minutes at 180 deg C. Remove and then turn each slice to the other side. Bake it for another 15 more minutes or until done.

Remove the done chips.

                                   

Pre heat the oven again for 10 minutes. Meanwhile arrange the undone thicker slices.

Bake it for 15 minutes at 180 deg C. Remove and then turn each slice to the other side. Bake it for another 15-18 minutes or until done.Store in an air tight container.

Serve it as a snack or as an accompaniment to steamed rice with sambar/curd.

Notes: You can also bake all the slices together and then bake those undone thicker slices for some more time. I found this method quite easy.

If not using sambar powder, add a combination of cumin powder and coriander powder or just cumin powder alone.

I forgot to add jaggery. You can a tsp of grated jaggery while mixing the vegetable with masala powders.. 

This goes to Love 2 Bake event happening at spicy treats. We share baked recipes every Monday.