Makhana (fox nuts / phool makhana)
मखाना
Nuts & Dried Fruit
The puffed seed of the prickly water lily, roasted in ghee for panjiri and vrat food, simmered into kheer, or curried as makhana matar. It has almost no flavour of its own and works as texture and as a carrier for ghee and spice.
What to know
It is bought by volume and cooked by weight, and the two feel wildly different — a 200 ml cup holds only about 8 g. Roast it in ghee until it snaps before it goes anywhere near liquid or sugar; underroasted makhana turns to cotton wool in the mouth.
- Choosing it
- Big, round, evenly white pops with few grey specks. Bend one — it should snap. Any that bend rather than break have taken up damp and will stay leathery however long you roast them.
- Storing it
- Airtight, away from the stove. It draws moisture out of the air faster than anything else in the cupboard; a jar opened daily in monsoon will go soft in a week. Re-crisp in a dry pan for two minutes before use.
- If you cannot get it
- Grown and processed almost entirely in north Bihar. Widely sold across India and in Indian groceries abroad, increasingly on general supermarket shelves as a snack.
Measures
- 1 cup ≈ 8 g
Cups here are the Indian 200 ml cup, not the 240 ml US cup — a common reason a recipe does not work. Weigh where you can; the grams are the figure we cook to.
Recipes using makhana
None published yet.