Baked Hash Brown Basket Chaat

I love chaat, of course because I am Indian! And also because there is something so special about it, it is a plethora of everything. It has overabundance of flavors – it is savoury, spicy, sweet and tangy. It is a jumble of textures, from mushy to crunchy, from creamy to flaky. And still when you eat it, each flavor and each texture stands out. Nothing gets mixed up in the crowd.

The best part is that chaat is also easy to prepare, especially if you are making it for a crowd. The base of the chaat is the only thing that you need to worry about. You can top it up with whatever condiments you want. And that is it!

The ‘baked hash brown basket chaat’ that I am writing about is essentially just a variety of the aloo tokri chaat. The original requires layering grated potato between two tea strainers and then deep frying them, something like this. Though this method reaps amazingly-shaped baskets, it is cumbersome and takes a lot of time. And as we know, baking is usually much better than deep frying,

TA DA

Baked Hash Brown Basket Chaat

Hash Brown Basket

You Will Need

Muffin tin/ muffin moulds

2 large potatoes (for 8 bite-sized baskets; increase or decrease the number of potatoes accordingly as per your requirement)

1 tablespoon cornflour

1/4 teaspoon ground paprika

1 tablespoon olive oil

Salt and pepper to taste

Additional olive oil for greasing

You can also add in couple of cloves of finely chopped garlic or about 1/4 cup of finely chopped onion/scallions or any other thing you might think will compliment the taste.

How to Go About It

Grease the muffin tin/muffin moulds well and keep it aside.

Preheat oven to 400F/200C.

Grate the potatoes and sprinkle them with a teaspoon of salt. Set them aside for about 10 minutes. The potatoes will get a little brown but that’s ok since we will be baking them later and then they will get brown anyway. Still if you bother about the color so much, immerse the salted grated potatoes in cold water and set them aside for 10 minutes.

Gather all the grated potatoes in a  cheesecloth and wring it well. We basically want to remove water from the potatoes and dry them up as much as possible.

Transfer dried potatoes to a bowl and mix in cornflour, paprika, olive oil and any other thing that you want to. Also add in salt and pepper as per requirement.

Now quickly spoon about 2 tablespoon of grated potato mixture in each muffin mould. You need to make sure that you line the bottom and walls well. The potatoes are going to shrink as they cook, so make sure that you enough for that.

Spray/brush the lined potatoes with a little oil.

Lower the temperature to 350F/180C and let the potato baskets cook for 20 minutes. You will know that they are done when they appear golden brown in color. If your baskets are not done in 20 minutes, bake them for 5-10 minutes more on the same temperature.

Once done, let the baskets cool within the tin/mould for 5 minutes. After that, take the hash brown baskets out and fill them with your favorite chaat condiment.

Hash Brown Basket Toppings

You can use whichever condiment you want to fill the hash brown baskets. For this particular chaat I am using –

Boiled mung bean

Finely chopped onion and capsicum

Curd mixed with sugar

Tamarind chutney

Mint chutney

Bhujia

You can also use other condiments like salsa, chopped pickles or sriracha. Just remember one condiment from each of these flavours – sweet, spicy, savoury, tangy; and from each of these textures – creamy, crispy, crunchy and mushy.