Rice Murukku / Mullu Murukku ~ Easy Diwali Snack!!

Its just only a week for Diwali/Festival of Lights and this Blogosphere is raining with all Diwali Sweets & Snacks. I really enjoy visiting your space, very colorful and mouth watering dishes presented with festive mood. Great work by u all. This is the first Diwali savory/snack am posting here on my space. I planned to make few more snacks before Diwali to share it here on my space but dunno h far i can do it. Let me try my best and coming to today's recipe, Rice Murukku/Mullu Murukku is one of my favorite murukku but my Mom makes this very rarely and for Diwali Thenkuzhal, ribbon pakoda and omapodi was her constant Diwali snack.
As this is my favorite one i started with this crunchy mullu murukku. This is very easy to make and a non failure recipe. I don't have enough patience to make a perfect spirals, so for picture i made around 10 or 12 murukku and the remaining did like thool murukku. I don't bother about the shape or size, this crunchy murukku makes a perfect tea time snack and i even love to have it as a side dish for rasam and rice. The recipe as follows...

Ingredients

1. Rice Flour         4 cups
2. Dalia powder/Roasted gram dal powder       1 cup (pottu kadalai maavu)
3. Butter        4 tbsp
4. Chili Powder        1/2 tsp(optional)
5. Cumin seeds          1 tbsp
6. Hing/Asofoetida       1/4 tsp
7. Sesame seeds        1/2 tbsp (black or white)
8. Salt     to taste
9. Oil       for deep frying

Method

• First take 1 cup and 1 tbsp of dalia and blend it to a fine powder and sift it and keep aside.
• Then in a mixing bowl, add rice flour, ground dalia powder, enough salt, cumin seeds, hing, sesame seeds and mix well.

• Now add melted butter(heat in microwave for 30 seconds) and mix well.
• And then add water (around 1 1/2-1 3/4 cups of water) little by little and knead it to a soft and pliable dough.
• The dough should be too hard or sticky, just soft n pliable one.

• then divide the dough in to 7-8 big balls and keep covered with a damp cloth.
• Heat oil in a kadai for deep frying, then grease murukku achu with oil and fill with it with one divided ball, close it tightly. Use star shaped achu/plate for making mullu murukku(as show in the pic).

• While the oil get hot, shape the dough in to greased Ziploc or plate or ladle and when oil gets hot, drop the shaped murukku and fry in medium hot oil.
• After 1-2 minutes turn other side and fry till the hissing sound stops and murukku turns light golden color.
• Once done remove from the oil and drain it in paper towel.
• After cooling store the murukku in an air tight container. This murukku remains good for upto 3 weeks or more.
• That's it...super crunchy and tasty Rice Murukku / Mullu Murukku ready.

Notes:
For vegan option ~ instead of butter u can also use any oil, but use hot oil(heat it before use).
Adding chili powder is purely optional, this murukku tastes good even without spiciness.
Likewise for spicy murukku, instead of chili powder, freshly ground chili paste can also be added.
If you want to make it even more flavorful, just ground 3-4 garlic cloves along with chilies and add it to the rice-dalia mixture.
Sifting rice and dalia powder is a must so don't omit that step.
Use vadai kambi or wooden skewer or chopsticks to turn the murukku other side. This way its easy to flip and doesn't get break up.
Always fry the murukku in medium hot oil, if fried in high heat, it turns golden brown soon but the inner side will not cooked properly.