Instant Oats Paniyaram

Finding some quick and healthy snack to go with the evening tea is quite a difficult one. There are some which I like and the husband doesn't favor that. Most of the times I end up making cutlets/tikkis, masala papad and the like. Two days back, I was looking for something new to make, since I was bored of making the snacks again. Then I remembered about the oats paniyaram which I have seen in several blogs. I just went with my instinct and prepared the batter. I had some crisp, yet soft paniyarams after half an hour. Since I used non-stick paniyram pan, I could make with less oil.  Let's move on to the recipe.

You need

• Quick cooking oats - 1 cup
• Rice flour - 1 tblspn
• Sour curd - 1/2 cup 
• Water - 1/2 cup
• Salt to taste
• Ginger- 1/2 inch
• Green chilly - 2 nos

To Temper

• Oil - 1 tspn
• Mustard seeds - 1/2 tspn
• Chana dal - 1 tspn
• Hing - few shakes

Method

Grind ginger and green chilly. You can add  green chilly and ginger, chopped. I added the paste to avoid biting into the chilly.  Mix all the ingredients in a bowl. Temper with mustard seeds, chana dal and hing. Add the seasoning to the batter. Leave it to 15 minutes or at least for 10 minutes, to give some soaking time for the oats. Add a teaspoon of water if the batter has turned thick on standing.  

Heat the paniyaram pan. I used the non-stick one. Add half a teaspoon of oil in each of the depression. When it is moderately hot, spoon teaspoon full of batter into each hole. Drizzle another half teaspoon of oil on top of each paniyaram. When the bottom is cooked, flip and cook the top side too. Remove and serve with your favorite chutney. 

To this batter, you can add some onions of grated carrot too. The base batter can be dressed up in many ways to suit your taste and ingredients available.

It was very crisp on the outside and spongy on the inside. The slight tang from the curd, heat from ginger and chilly, bite from the chana dal made it an awesome tea time snack. I served with a dip of molgapodi drizzled with the oil from the Punjabi pickle.