We decided to make beetroot dhokla drawing inspiration from the spongy dhokla popular in indian cuisine and the beetroot salads which are ubiquitous in north American menus.

What is Dhokla

Dhokla is a very popular snack believed to have its origins in Indian western state of gujarat. In pune it has for years been sold as khaman dhokla, which in pune is bright yellow in color and made from besan (chic pea flour). In reality based on insight provided by our friends Jigar and Mehul, dhokla is made from rice flour and khaman is the one that is made from besan with turmeric giving it the yellow color. we also got a wonderful recipe from Jigar’s mom for such a dhokla.In both cases the wet mixture is fermented overnight so that it gets airy with millions of little air bubbles trapped inside.Then it is steamed and the air pockets expand while the batter gets cooked resulting in a light and spongy dhokla. In modern times to avoid the overnight fermentation another methods are used for aeration of the batter like fruit salt or using a no2 whipping siphon. Also microwave seems to work quite well and is especially required in the latter technique.

Why beetroot dhokla

We wanted to create something seasonal and a seasonal flavored dhokla seemed to be an interesting exploration. We had seen some recipes of tri-color dhoklas with cilantro and carrots added for flavoring. We also wanted to see if dhokla can be pushed into more global flavor pairings. Typically dhokla is garnished with tempering of mustard leaves, curry leaves, coconut, cilantro and tamarind chutney. So there’s textures, sweet and creamy flavors from coconut, pungency and bitterness from curry and mustard as well as sour and citrus from tamarind and turmeric (khaman) respectively. We wanted to respect that while bringing in other produce and herbs into the picture.

How to bring in a more intense beetroot flavor

We tried first by making beetroot dhokla as well as khaman with boiled beetroot puree. For the besan khaman we also tried using the no2 siphon to foam the flour like whipping cream, discharging it in a cup and microwaving it for a minute. It resulted in the lightest creation, much more spongier but not the same as khaman since the crumb size was much smaller. It was more like cake.

We immediately also concluded that the beetroot cannot shine through with the besan’s strong nutty flavor and is not all that suitable for making khaman other than the lovely color it imparts. It worked much much better with the neutral and subtle rice flour and semolina dhokla. However it wasn’t intense enough. Hence we tried beetroot juice and when even that didn’t make it strong enough we tried using beetroot powder which finally were the ting we were looking for. Also with beetroot puree we found that the fiber weighed down the dhokla in a way and we found good aeration and crumb when we used the beetroot powder.

Flavor pairing

Once we had the beetroot dhokla figured out we picked from other things that beetroot paired well with. Goat cheese was an immediate candidate but we could not have a very strong goat cheese flavor because of the subtlety of dhokla. We made a mousse by using cream and gelatin mixed with goat cheese to lighten the flavor as well as texture.

For the sour component we immediately chose fresh pickles slices of beet and a sweetly acidic natural flavor from slices of apples. We also pickled white mustard which not only added a sour and bitter component but wonderful textural play with mustard seeds that popped like caviar. We crumbled toasted walnuts for nuttiness and crunch and for the herbaceous component we were happy that our homegrown dill almost easily pairs with what we have in the dish. We were also lucky to have blossoming cilantro and used the blossoms for garnish.

Ask for a Recipe

This post does provide some insights on how we made our dhokla and the overall components. If anyone does want to try it in its entirety or wants recipe for particular component, we will be very happy to pen down a recipe. Just leave a comment below. if you want to try a traditional recipe please do watch this wonderful video by Nisha Madhulika on how to make dhokla. Also quite interesting to watch how the besan flour based khaman is made for street food snacking.