Do you know why Chikkis are considered super healthy? If not then you are at right place. In this blog I will walk you through the health benefits of Chikki, a recipe made from Sesame (also known as Til in India) and Jaggery (also known as Gud), and also the step by step process to prepare Til Chikki recipe at home or Sesame Crackers (as some people call it).
This recipe comes from India, a place where Chikkis are loved. Different types of chikki are prepared in India, the famous ones are Til Chikki (or Sesame Chikki), Peanuts Chikki, Rajgira Chikki and Dry Fruits Chikki made by combining many dry fruits. A common ingredient in most of these Chikkis is, Gud or Jaggery. However, chikki recipes are also prepared using sugar too instead of Jaggery or Gud. Let’s get into more details of Chikki benefits and importance.
Benefits of Chikki with Jaggery
As most of the chikkis are prepared using jaggery, we will be seeing benefits of jaggery first and then we will understand why chikkis have the importance in Indian Cuisine. Jaggery is a good source of Iron which helps to increase or maintain your haemoglobin(HB) level. Apart from HB level, jaggery has plenty of other health benefits – it controls blood pressure, contributes to get a glowing skin, and importantly, jaggery controls Anaemia which is caused by HB (haemoglobin) deficiency.
A very important benefit of eating jaggery is that it helps in food digestion too. So, it is recommended to eat a small quantity of jaggery after meals for good digestion. Also, it’s said that if you eat small amount of jaggery after meals, especially post dinner, then it even helps to prevent diabetes. If you are from India, you might know already that many decades ago our ancestors followed a tradition to give a piece of Jaggery and water when they had visitors arriving at their home, especially during summer as Jaggery is warm in nature and it was believed that – heat destroys heat!
As chikkis are also prepared using peanuts(also known as moongfali), sesame(til), rajgira, dry fruits and many more, every ingredient used to prepare chikki has its own contents to make chikki a healthy nutritious bar which you can store and eat anytime as snack. And chikkis are prepared and eaten during winter as jaggery helps to maintain our body temperature (warm).
Brief information about Til Chikki or Til Gud Chikki
Til Gud Chikki, a very healthy Chikki recipe which is specially prepared in India on the occasion of Makar Sankranti, which falls during winter (in the month of January). With all the jaggery benefits already discussed, sesame has its own unique benefits for stronger teeth and bones.
Sesame or Til has good amount of fibre, Vitamin B, plant based protein and lower in cholesterol. This sesame chikki or til ki chikki is best for boosting immunity too. Both jaggery and sesame are warm in nature so these are good food choices to have during winters. These are the main reasons why Til Chikki is one of the best winter food to keep our body warm and strong.
This Til Chikki recipe is perfect to get crunchy textured chikki. If you follow the steps and right measurement, you can too prepare perfect crunchy til ki chikki at your home.
Here is the step by step video about how to make Til Gud Chikki at home.
Looking for Sweet delights to satisfy your taste buds? Here is a Strawberries and Cream Recipe.
To check many more such tasty food recipes, you may visit FoodQuench’s YouTube Channel.
So let’s not wait anymore and see how to make Crunchy, Healthy and Tasty Til Chikki.
Crunchy Til Gud Chikki Recipe in 15 minutes | Sesame Crackers Recipe made from Jaggery and Sesame
Description
Ingredients for Til Gud Chikki Recipe
Cooking method for Til Gud Chikki Recipe (Sesame Crackers)
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Add few drops of ghee on a parchment or butter paper and spread it. You can use silver foil too or if you don't have any of these then you can grease a thali or chakla (a flat utensil or plate) with ghee or butter and keep it ready before you start preparing chikki.
First of all it's very important to keep the parchment paper or butter paper ready because Chikki mixture thickens very quickly and then it becomes difficult to spread. -
Place a pan over stove and turn on the flame. Once pan is heated up, add sesame to it and roast. Make sure to roast sesame on medium flame for 2 to 3 minutes until they start to splutter, and become light golden in color and fluffy.
If you roast sesame on high flame, it will get burnt and taste bitter. -
Once sesame are light golden roasted, transfer to a different plate and allow to cool down completely.
If you keep sesame in the same roasted pan they would become bit darker because of already heated pan. -
Now again heat pan and add jaggery to the pan. Keep stirring and allow jaggery to melt. If required, you can add ½ tbsp of water to the jaggery when it is half melted.
Pan shouldn't be super hot because the moment you add jaggery to it, jaggery will burn immediately if pan is very hot. -
Once jaggery is melted and started to form bubbles, add ghee to it.
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Cook for a minute or two after adding ghee and then lower the flame because we should test to check if jaggery syrup texture is good for perfect crunchy chikki.
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To test jaggery syrup -
- Take some water in a small bowl
- Then add a little jaggery syrup to it
- Bring all jaggery syrup together using your fingers and form a candy like ball
- Check if jaggery syrup breaks, it shouldn't be sticky
Here, in the image, jaggery syrup is sticky and we can stretch it. So need to cook for some more time until we get a candy textured ball.
Keep repeating this test to get a perfect syrup, until the syrup is not sticky and breaks. (You can visit the YouTube Video to see this step if needed) -
Jaggery syrup is well cooked now (Colour of Jaggery syrup generally depends on many things like if it's organic or with added chemicals).
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Again add jaggery syrup to a bowl, grab it together to form a ball and then break it. It is looking like a candy and is breaking. So this is perfect, now turn off the flame.
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Be quick and immediately transfer roasted sesame or til to the jaggery syrup and mix.
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Now transfer the mixture to greased parchment paper and place 2nd paper on top. Roll out to thin, medium or thick layer as you prefer.
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Place marks with the knife on the rolled out chikki mixture layer and allow it to completely cool down.
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Once cooled down, separate chikkis as marked. Crunchy and healthy Til ki Chikki (or Til Gud Chikki) is ready.
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Til Chikki is ready and it tastes amazing. It's one of my favorite snack. Hope you will like this crunchy textured til or sesame chikki and get its health benefits too.
