This delectable Spinach Puri is aromatic, flavorful, beautifully green from spinach, and goes perfectly well with any vegetable curry. It also tastes well with pickles or a cup of tea or coffee!

Making Palak Puri is convenient and serves as a special treat. It can be made for a feast, Thali, breakfast, picnic, or served with potato curry, aamras (sweet mango pulp), or Shrikhand!

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About Spinach Puri
Why You Will Love The Palak Puri
Ingredients
Step-by-Step Directions
Serving Suggestions
Helpful Tips
More Indian Flatbread Recipes
Recipe Card

About Spinach Puri

Puri is deep-fried Indian bread made with whole wheat or all-purpose flour. It can be eaten with any curry, for breakfast, as a snack, or light meal.

For most families, Puri is essential to a fancy home-cooked meal. When special occasions or guests come over for lunch or dinner, Puri is made as part of Thali, an elaborate Gujarati meal.

Puri is famous for being served with various potato curries. For my family, puri is a must to serve with Aloo Palak (No Onion No Garlic) / Aloo Palak Sabji or Bombay Potatoes (No Onion No Garlic). It can also be served with Aamras (sweet mango pulp) or Shrikhand.

Many kinds of puri exist in our Gujarati culture and other Indian regions. We make plain, masala, sweet, and spinach puri. The puri has a lovely green hue because of the spinach leaves, and it tastes fantastic.

Palak Puri is a hit among adults as well as kids. The best part is it can be served in various ways. You can eat the puri as it is, with vegetable curry, dry sabji, or for breakfast. It is also a great option to bring it in your picnic basket.

Why You Will Love The Palak Puri

Spinach Puri is easy and quick to make with a few ingredients.
It is delicious with a goodness of spinach.
Puri can be made and served for a special occasion.
It can also eaten as a snack with a cup of tea or coffee or for picnics.
Palak Puri goes perfectly well with any choice of curry.
It can be a part of your feast or Thali.

spinach puri with pickle on the serving plate

Ingredients

Whole Wheat Flour: Use your favorite whole wheat flour that you use for Chapatis for this recipe. But if you like, you can also use multigrain flour to make the Palak Puri.
Spinach: Thoroughly wash the spinach and discard the wilted leaves. Do not blanch the spinach for longer in the boiling water. Instead of a food processor, you can puree the spinach in a blender. Also, you can finely chop the blanched spinach instead of making puree if you like.
Oil: Adding oil to the flour while making the dough makes the Puri soft. Also, we need oil for frying. I have used sunflower oil, but you can use your choice of cooking oil.
Spices and Seasonings: Add salt to taste; other spices are carom seeds and cumin seeds.
Ginger: With ginger, you can add green chili paste as well if you want to make the Puri spicy.

Step-by-Step Directions

Making The Dough

Remove the stems from the spinach. If the stems are very tender, and if you prefer, you can keep them.
I always discard the stems and use only spinach leaves.
Rinse the spinach thoroughly with running water, and make sure to remove any dirt or sand from the leaves.

Bring 3-4 cups of water to boil in a large pot. Once the water starts boiling, add spinach leaves and cook for a minute. Then turn off the heat.

Take ice cubes (or cold water with some ice cubes) in a medium bowl.
Remove the spinach from the pot and place it immediately in the bowl of ice.
Placing the spinach into an ice bowl will retain the color and will stop further cooking of spinach.

Squeeze out as much excess water as possible from the spinach, and make a paste using a food processor or blender.

Add flour, spinach paste, salt, ginger, cumin, carom seeds, and oil in a large mixing bowl.
Mix to combine everything well.

Add water gradually and mix until a semi-soft dough is formed. You may need only a little water; I needed to add 2 tablespoon of water to bind the dough.
Knead the dough for 2-3 minutes, then cover it with a damp towel and set aside for 15-20 minutes.

Rolling and Frying The Puri

Meanwhile, in a medium to large pot, heat oil for deep frying on medium to high heat
Make small balls of the dough, about 20-22.
Roll them between the palms of your hands to make a round ball, and then flatten them gently. Keep them aside.

Using a rolling pin, roll each ball out round into about a 4-5 inch diameter circle to make the puri.
If the dough sticks to the surface, apply oil to the rolling pin and the surface.
While rolling into Puri, do not tear or pierce them; they will not puff up if damaged.
You can roll one by one Puri and fry, or roll out 4-5 Puris at a time, keeping them on a plate.
Then, fry them all before rolling out the next batch.

Once the oil is ready, add each puri to the oil.
As soon as it rises to the surface, with a spider skimmer or slotted spoon, gently tap around the edges to encourage puffing.

When it has puffed up, turn it over and fry the other side until golden browned.
Remove it from the oil and drain on a kitchen paper towel on the plate.
Roll out the other puri and fry them one or two at a time.

Serving Suggestions

Serve the puri with your favorite curry. A few suggestions are to serve puri with Aloo Gobi (No Onion No Garlic), Aloo Palak (No Onion No Garlic), or Bombay Potatoes (No Onion No Garlic).
Spinach Puri is great to have for breakfast with a cup of tea, coffee, or milk.
It can be served with plain yogurt or Raita.
My favorite way is to have the spinach puri with mango pickles.
This puri can be served with Aamras (mango pulp) or Shrikhand.

Helpful Tips

Making The Doug: Adding oil to the flour while making the dough makes the puri soft and helps it puff while frying. So, do not skip oil in the dough. The dough for puri should be slightly stiff, not too soft, and not too hard.
Water: I added only two tablespoon of water to bind the dough. So, after adding oil and spinach pulp, mix everything well and eventually add water as required. You may not need water to make the dough, depending on how thin your spinach puree is.
Resting The Dough: Allow the dough to rest for 15-20 minutes. Resting the dough helps in rolling the puri easily.
Rolling The Puri: Do not use dry flour to roll the puri. If you have difficulty rolling it, apply a little oil on the rolling pin and the dough ball. Also, do not roll the puri too thick or thin.
Checking Oil Before Frying: It is essential that the oil is really hot before beginning to fry the spinach puri. To check, add a small pinch of the dough to the oil. If it quickly rises to the oil surface, the oil is ready to fry the puri.
Frying The Puri: Once the oil is hot, fry the puri on high-medium heat to ensure it puffs up fully. If frying the puri on low-medium heat, it will absorb much oil and not puff up.