Vegetable Puff Recipe with step by step video instructions. Vegetable Puffs are a popular Indian bakery snacks made by filling sheets of puff pastry with a spicy potato and mix vegetable mash. Vegetable Puff or Pattis are perfect for a tea time snack.
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Vegetable Puffs or Pattis, as I knew them throughout my childhood, have always been a favorite tea time snack. Layers of crispy flaky puff pastry that crumbled as you ate them, filled with a spicy veg filling, mainly potato.
Veg Puffs are also so easy to carry that they are almost the most popular food on the walk for me. I used to buy them all the time when I was in college and eat them on the bus on my way home.
What are Vegetable Puffs?
Vegetable Puffs or Veg Puff or Veg Pattis are a very popular savory bakery snack sold in India. They are very similar to curry puffs that you may find in South Asia but vegetarian. A spicy filling of potato and mix vegetables are sealed in puff pastry sheets and baked until golden. These are a popular evening snack.
While I loved eating them, until a few years ago, I didn't attempt to bake them myself. The reason? the extremely complicated recipe for the puff pastry. I mean you have the rough puff and the traditional puff pastry. The rough puff pastry, while works out perfectly for pies, doesn't really work for our bakery-style puffs. And the traditional one, well I attempted it. I laminated the butter and dough and went through the whole shebang. The resulting puff tasted nothing like the bakery puff. My sister just rolled her eyes saying it tasted too buttery for her liking. Although I hate to admit it, it was true. That puff pastry would have tasted amazing with something sweet like a chocolate puff or something, but for savory, the butter just took over. And I may have messed up somewhere because it never got the nice golden color and the pastry became way flakier than I would have liked.
Bakery style Puffs....
A few years ago I visited my cousin who had taken up the running of a bakery on contract. He had a cook who would make the pastry and bake the final puffs, while my aunt made the filling. So this recipe of the filling is actually courtesy of her. I would have never thought of adding in the mint leaves, but she did and it tasted amazing. I left it as optional since most bakeries do not add it, but it does taste really good with it.
Regarding the puff pastry, the cook used vanaspati or dalda (hydrogenated vegetable oil). All bakeries use vanaspati in their puffs, it makes them crispier and is much easier to use as it doesn't melt at room temperature. While it makes the puffs vegan and much easier to make, vanaspati is not good for health.
So in this recipe, we followed the exact same process as that of the bakery, but replaced the vanaspati with butter. This makes the puffs crispy without an oily feeling. While it is not the healthiest recipe around with all that butter in there, it is definitely better for you than the vanaspati.
Some tips and details
- Use a good quality unsalted butter as this is the taste that will come through in your puff pastry.
- Adding sugar in the dough helps with the color. If you are avoiding sugar, you can skip it, but the puffs will be paler to the eye. You can also brush the puff with milk before baking for more color.
- 3 folds is the common way of making puff pastry. Any more than that may lead to a very dense pastry that may not rise well.
- I sealed the puff a little away from the edge and very gently. This allowed the edges to expand into separate layers. If you seal the edge, the pastry will still taste the same, but may not be visually very appealing.
- The first time I baked the puffs, I made the pastry a week ago and froze it. This puff had more well defined layers as compared to the one I made on the same day. It still tasted great.
- The puffs can be filled with anything you like, the filling recipe here is only one of the many. Feel free to be creative with it.
- If you need to bake in batches, store the remaining puffs in the fridge until the first batch bakes.
If you like this recipe, do not forget to share it with your friends and family!
Video Recipe
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How to make vegetable puff | Indian Veg Puff Recipe | Vegetable Puffs Recipe | Veg Curry Puffs Recipe
Vegetable Puffs are baked Indian puff pastry parcels stuffed with a spicy vegetable mix. These veg puffs are stuffed with a spicy mix of boiled potatoes, carrots and green peas. This recipe also shows how to make the puff pastry from scratch.Recipe Type: Snacks
Cuisine: Indian
Prep Time: 3 hours
Cook time: 45 minutes
Total time: 3 hours 45 minutes
Yield: Makes 8 Puffs
Author: Anupama
Ingredients:
For the Puff Pastry:
3 cups Maida / All Purporse Flour
190gms unsalted Butter
1 tsp Salt
1 Tbsp Sugar
0.5 Lime
1 cup cool Water
For the filling:
3 large Potatoes, boiled and peeled
1 Carrot, diced small
0.5 Green Peas, fresh or frozen
4-5 Garlic cloves
1 Tbsp Ginger, chopped
1-2 Green Chillies
Handful of mint leaves / pudina (Optional)
1 Onion, finely chopped
1 tsp Mustard Seeds
0.5 tsp Turmeric Powder
2-3 Tbsp Oil
Salt to taste
Method:
To make the puff pastry:
1. Squeeze the lime in the cool water.
2. To make the dough for the puff pastry, take 2 cups of the flour in a large bowl and add 1 Tbsp sugar and 1 tsp salt to it. We will use the remaining 1 cup of flour for dusting while rolling.
3. Add in 40 gms of the unsalted butter and with your fingers mix it in until the flour appears sandy.
4. Now add the cool water little by little and knead to a soft and smooth dough.
5. Make a few slits in the dough with a sharp knife and cover and rest for 20-30 minutes.
6. After resting, dust the counter with dry flour and place the dough on it. Roll the dough into a rectangle as thin as possible. Use dry flour for dusting as required.
7. Take 50 gms of unsalted butter and apply it in a thin layer to 2/3rd of the rolled dough.
8. Sprinkle some dry flour on the butter. This helps make the layers.
9. Now gently fold the non-buttered 1/3rd dough onto the buttered dough. Now fold the other end to complete the letter fold. For clearer instructions on folding, refer to the video.
10. Take a baking sheet and sprinkle some dry flour on it and place the folded dough. Cover with a moist cloth and cool it in the fridge for 20-30 minutes.
11. After 30 minutes, move the dough from the baking sheet to a dusted surface and roll it out again.
12. Repeat steps 7,8,9 and 10. This is the second fold. We will do one more similar roll and fold process.
13. After 30 minutes, repeat the same steps 7 to 9 for the third time.
14. At this point you can choose to freeze the puff pastry if using later. To freeze the puff pastry, wrap it in a plastic wrap and freeze it without folding. If you are planning to make it fresh, then repeat step 10 and continue to make the filling in the meanwhile.
15. If you are using frozen puff pastry sheet, then on the day of making the puff, remove the sheet from the freezer and keep it on the counter 45mins to 1 hour before you plan to bake. You want the dough to be pliable but the butter to still be cold. You can make the filling while the dough thaws.
To make the filling:
16. To make the vegetable filling, grind together the mint leaves (optional), ginger, garlic and green chillies into a paste.
17. Heat oil in a kadhai and add in the mustard seeds.
18. Once the mustard seeds splutter, add in the finely chopped onion and fry until the onions are golden.
19. Add the green peas and diced carrots. Fry until cooked.
20. Add the paste made earlier and saute until fragrant.
21. Add in turmeric powder and salt. Mix well.
22. Coarsely mash the boiled potato and add to the kadhai.
23. You can add garam masala for a spicy filling.
24. Keep aside the filling to cool to room temperature.
To make the puff:
25. Once the filling has cooled, roll out the dough on a surface dusted with dry flour.
26. Dust off the excess flour on the dough with a brush.
27. Cut the dough into 8 equal rectangular pieces.
28. Add a spoonful of filling in each rectangle in the center.
29. Wet your finger with water and lightly apply water along the shorter end of the piece.
30. Fold the pastry sheet to seal the puff. Very gently press a little away from the edges to seal . Do not crimp the edges if you want the layers to puff up and separate.
31. Preheat the oven to 220 degree C. Bake the puffs for 20 minutes or until the puffs are golden.
32. Cool on a wire rack. Serve warm or at room temperature.
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