As I mentioned in the last post, Onam is the season of plantain chips or crackers. Every bakery or shops in Kerala will be filled with plantain chips,yellow salty Fried Plantain Chips (upperi / kaya varuthath) and brown color jaggery coated plantain chips. If you ask me, my personal favorite is jaggery coated plantain chips – the famous sharkara varatti. Although the fried plantain chips are available year-round in almost every shops, the jaggery coated chips are rare. I have always noticed that many shops sell it only during Onam festival. Like the plantain chips, the jaggery coated chips is also a vital part of Sadya and in some places for breakfast also.
I never thought it to be this much easy to make at home. Both the upperi and sharkaravartti are similar in preparation. The only thing is sharkara varatti/ jaggery coated plantain chips requires some additional steps to make it sweet. They are thicker than the upperi. No Sadya is complete without upperi and sarkara varatti, whether it be Onam, Vishu or any special occasions.
Here is the recipe for jaggery syrup mentioned in the recipe:
Here goes the video recipe:
How to make Sharkara varatti (Jaggery coated Plantain Chips)
Jaggery Coated Plantain Chips
Jaggery Coated Plantain Chips / Sharkara Varatti
Ingredients
- 2 unripe plantains
- 1 tsp crushed ginger 1 tsp dry ginger powder
- 3/4 cup jaggery syrup
- 1 tsp cumin seed
- 3 tbsp powdered sugar
- Oil for deep frying
Instructions
- Make the cumin seed into a fine powder. Keep aside.
- Wash and peel the plantains. Cut it lengthwise to two halves.
- Again cut in to small 1/4 inch thick pieces.
- Heat oil in a pan on high.
- Add the plantain pieces. Reduce the flame to medium.
- Fry until the pieces start to turn red and crispy.
- Strain and transfer to a plate.
- Let it cool completely, about 30 minutes to 1 hour.
- In another pan, mix the jaggery syrup and crushed ginger.
- Bring it to a boil. Then add the cumin powder and mix well.
- Add the fried plantain chips in to the jaggery syrup. Mix well to coat.
- Remove from heat.
- Now add the powdered sugar and mix well. This will help the chips to separate and prevent the stickiness.
- Enjoy the sweet jaggery coated plantain chips.
- This will keep in an air-tight container for 1 week.
Usually, dry ginger powder (chukku podi) is used to make sharkara varatti. Since I ran out of it, I used fresh ginger instead. Also, some use cardamom powder for flavor which you can add if you wish. So this is the recipe for jaggery coated plantain chips. Hope you like it and everyone will make it for Onam.
Happy Cooking
I would like this, but I don’t know what jaggery syrup is. Please tell me.
Jaggery is the unrefined (unprocessed) form of sugar. It is usually available in different shades of brown. We can buy that in almost all Asian or Indian stores. Using jaggery we can prepare it’s syrup. The recipe is available in the blog.