Indian Cooking Challenge: Saggu Biyyam Murukulu

This month’s challenge is sagu biyyam (tapioca) muruku.  I almost forgot about the challenge,  until I saw Srivalli’s post yesterday.  I soaked the sagu right away and wanted to make it yesterday afternoon.  As I was going thru the recipe, I realized that I have to soak the sagu for 3 hours, not 30 minutes, as I had initially thought.  By the time the sagu soaked, I got busy and couldn’t make them yesterday.  I put it the fridge overnight and removed it in the morning.  Thought of making it first thing in the morning and that didn’t work either.  Final made them this evening.  Hence, my sagu soaked for over 24 hours!  I followed Srivalli’s recipe as given.

Source: Srivalli
Total Time: 45 minutes – 60 minutes
Preparation Time: 10 minutes (excludes sagu soaking time)
Cooking Time: 35 – 45 minutes

Print Recipe

• 2 cups Rice Flour
• ½ cup Besan Flour
• ½ cup Fried Gram Flour ½ cup Fried Gram or Daliya or Putnalu and grind to powder
• ½ cup Sago
• Salt to taste
• 50 gms (half of half cup) Curd ¼ – ⅓ cup Yogurt and the rest water to make 1 cup of butter milk
• 1 teaspoon Chile Powder or as per taste

Special Utensil:
Muruku Press

Muruku Press & the mess after the preparation!

• Soak Sago in Butter milk for 3 hrs, please ensure that you soak it enough else you may risk having the sago burst.
• Mix all the flour together, heat 50 gms oil, mix to the flour along with salt and chili powder. Then add the buttermilk soaked sago slowly and knead to a chapati dough consistency. I add some water as well to make a soft dough.
• Heat oil for deep frying.In the muruku press, put the dough. When the oil is hot, press down directly as murukus.


3 done and 3 more dough balls to go..

• Cook on medium flame to ensure the muruku is cooked well.
• I made the muruku in 6 batches.

• Ensure sago soaks in buttermilk well and is soft or else it will burst when you press it down in hot oil.
• I was not sure if I was to grind ½ cup fried gram to flour or use ½ cup fried gram flour.  So I floured ½ cup fried gram to powder.  Going thru everyones recipes, looks like I should have used ½ cup powder instead. I used my spice/coffee grinder to powder fried gram.
• Reading fellow ICC members post, I noticed that some of them added 50 gms of curd + the butter milk that was used to soak the sagu.  Something to try the next time I make these murukus.
• Also, reading from the comment here and looking at the fellow ICC members recipe pictures, my dough does look very dry.  Had I made it softer, perhaps I would have gotten a nice shape! 🙁
• Cook on medium to ensure even cooking.