Low Fat Drop Fried Sweet Potato Bread Roll

Everybody likes fried snacks. However, all can not enjoy deep fried snacks due to very high amount of calories and fat contents. Especially true, when we are making bread rolls, because excess oil gets absorbed by pores in the bread.

In addition, during deep frying, the first batch gets fried in fresh oil. As we go on frying batch after batch, the oil starts deteriorating. Then the snacks no longer remain healthy.

Drop frying solves above problems and offers good alternative to deep frying. Drop frying as the name suggests uses few drops of oil. It uses almost 75 % less oil. Hence drop fried snacks have significantly less calories and fat content. Secondly, drop frying always uses fresh drops of oil. Hence drop fried snacks are healthier than deep fried ones.

Another significant advantage of drop frying is, one does not need large quantity of oil to start with. Few spoons of oil is what is needed, for the whole family to enjoy fried snacks. There is no leftover unhealthy used cooking oil in this process.

Drop frying uses special pan called "Paniyaram" pan or "Takoyaki" pan in Japanese. This pan has semi-spherical moulds. Few drops of oil is put in each mould. Then the batter is introduced in each mould. Frying is done at low flame in order to get olden brown colour.

Ingredients: Following items are required for making 11 Sweet Potato Bread Rolls (See Fig 1)

1 Medium size Sweet Potato boiled, peeled mashed

4 to 5 Almonds, cut into small pieces

3 to 4 Cardamoms, powdered

2 to 3 tea spoon raisins

4 to 5 Cashew nuts, broken into pieces

2 to 3 spoon Sugar

5 tea spoon cooking oil for drop frying 11 bread rolls

11 slices of whole wheat bread, edges removed

Pressure cook the sweet potato such that it becomes soft. Peel it and mash it into a smooth paste. Add sugar to this paste and mix well. Take a normal frying pan and keep it on low heat. Put the stuffing into the pan and heat it for 2 to 3 minutes while continuously stirring the contents. This step is required to remove the water which has appeared after putting sugar so as to get proper consistency.

Once stuffing cools down, add cardamom powder and dry fruits. Mix well and make 11 balls as shown in Fig 2.

Take 11 slices of whole wheat bread and cut the edges. Now dip each slice in water and immediately squeeze out the water properly. Take one stuffing ball and wrap the wet slice of bread over it as shown in Fig. 3. Make all 11 rolls ready and keep them aside as shown in Fig. 4.

Take the Paniyaram pan and keep it for heating on low flame. Once the pan is sufficiently hot, put few drops of oil in each mould as shown in Fig. 5. Then, one by one, start putting the bread rolls in each of the moulds. Start with periphery and at the end put the rolls in the central moulds. This is because the mould at the centre are hotter than those at the periphery. Allow the rolls to get fried for few minutes.

Now, turn the rolls within the moulds, so that uncooked surface goes down inside the moulds as shown in Fig. 6. On top of each roll, pour few more drops of oil. Keep rotating the rolls so that those get uniformly fried to golden brown colour as shown in Fig. 7.

Serve hot, crispy and delicious drop fried sweet potato bread rolls with chocolate sauce as shown in Fig. 8. Now every body can enjoy low fat drop fried and healthier sweet potato bread rolls without worrying about calories and fats.

1) For making the bread slices wet, one can use milk instead of water.

2) While serving, one can pour little bit of ghee or apply butter to the rolls, in order to enhance the taste.

3) In order to get perfect spherical shape use fresh bread.

For more recipes using drop frying and for videos please click following links:

Videos with subtitles for Vada Pav and Bread roll recipes video link:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7u_3PyDMC9Q

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=862XpBjGppk

Search for DROP FRIED HEALTHY SNACKS at amazon.com

Link for Paniyaram pan:

http://www.amazon.com/premier-Non-Stick-Paniyaram-Pan-Large/dp/B007YAFBVW

Uma Deshpande

Bangalore