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This chaat is definitely one of the mighty stars of Indian street snacks! If you know me, you know my favorite snacks are certainly potato-based! From aloo samosas, aloo patties, and sabudana aloo tikki! I can’t get enough of potatoes, and if you love them as much as I do, there are plenty of potato recipes on the blog!
I recently shared my Air Fryer Delhi-Style Aloo Chaat recipe. After making that and having nostalgia rush through me, I was craving another one of my favorites! This dish is adored by everyone in New Delhi and is one of the most popular street-side items for a reason that you’ll be able to see (and taste!) for yourself!
If you want to explore the street-side snacks right from home, then I totally encourage you to try this easy recipe and to have a theme of making Indian street-side snacks! I share more in my free 5 tips to get motivated to cook, Make Cooking Fun!! how having a theme can inspire you to make dishes you’ve never thought of before! This month I’m totally in the mood for crispy snacks, and Indian cooking definitely has some of the best street-side Indian snacks! If you’ve never had Indian street-side food, this is your chance! Try this recipe out in your Live to Cook one-month challenge, which you’ll also get by signing up for my newsletter!
For all details in how to make the perfect crispy aloo chaat, be sure to watch the video to follow along with me! Please subscribe to my YouTube channel if you haven’t already, and don’t forget to hit the bell button so that you don’t miss when I upload all of my video recipes! I love sharing the video recipes to go along with my written ones to guarantee your success! Let’s get cooking!
What is Aloo Tikki?▼
Aloo means potato and tikki means patty. Aloo tikki are crispy deep-fried potato patties that can be enjoyed as a snack (as in this recipe) or in the popular McDonald’s India McAloo Tikki Burger.
What is Chaat?▼
Let’s clear up what chaat means. While the word does not directly translate to English, it does but the word comes from the words “lick” and “tasty.” A class of Indian street-side snacks both savory and sweet are chaat. These snacks consist of the following elements:
- Starchy base: Examples include samosas, bread fritters, or puffed rice (bhel)
- Crunchy toppings: These include raw onions, tomatoes, or sev or boondi (chickpea-flour-based chips, the former are strips and the latter are little balls)
- Chaat masala: A tangy spice that is essential!
- Garnished with yogurt or chutney!
These snacks are served as hors d’oeuvres. There are different types of chaat such asfruit chaat, samosa chaat, and papri chaat (papri is like a chip made from wheat dough). While I may be biased, I’m truly convinced that the best chaats are served street-side in New Delhi!
Why You’ll Love This Aloo Tikki Chaat Recipe!
- Fried potatoes: Served with sweet, sour, and spicy chutneys! This little snack really is an umami of flavors! Potato lovers around will definitely swoon!
- Quick recipe: It may seem like there’s a lot of work going on here, but this is actually quite quick to make, believe it or not. Once the prep is done, you just need to get frying!
- Kid-friendly: Trust me, the whole family will love these amazing potato patties! Make them for a weekend snack, as appetizers for a dinner party, or just to satisfy a craving! Kids won’t be able to keep their hands off of them!
- Authentic chaat recipe: This recipe tastes just like it is in New Delhi.
What potatoes should I use?▼
I pretty much always use Yukon gold yellow potatoes. I love the flavor on the inside and these potatoes get perfectly crispy and have a nice golden brown color. You can also use russet potatoes or white potatoes if you don’t have Yukon gold.
what oil should I use to deep fry?▼
I used vegetable oil to fry my chaat. Other great options are canola oil, peanut oil, or ghee for frying. Back in Delhi, they probably fry the aloo chaat in something called “refined oil.” Using any oil that’s appropriate for deep frying - one with a high smoke point and that is neutral - will be perfectly fine here!
How do I know The oil is ready to fry?▼
Take a tiny ball of potato and add to the oil to test if the oil is hot enough. The ball should instantly rise up and eventually start to turn golden brown and crispy. However, in case the color change happens rather quickly, the oil is likely smoking and/or too hot. To bring the temperature of the oil down, you can either lower the heat, remove the pan from the heat temporarily or add more oil. Test again, and only proceed once the oil is ready.
How do I Avoid A Greasy Potato Patty?▼
With deep-frying, a greasy final product is usually due to frying in oil that is not hot enough. If the oil isn’t hot enough, the potato will absorb the oil, as the oil comes to temperature and the patty will be excessively oily. You also want to make sure that the patty is tightly packed. Any cracks or crevices may trap oil and make the patty too oily, even if you fry at the right oil temperature. Make sure to test the oil temperature before frying as advised above and you should be good.
Why is my aloo tikki breaking?▼
You need to ensure the patty is not warm, or hot. The potatoes need to be at room temperature to ensure the integrity of the patty’s shape is not broken. As you ball and portion the patty, tightly pack the potatoes and ensure there are no large lumps.
The rice flour that we add to this potato mix helps to keep the shape and avoid any major cracks in the shaping process or during frying.
In case the advised amount of rice flour is not working for your potatoes, you likely need to add more. So add 1 Tbsp at a time, and fry a test patty to be sure, before preparing the entire batch.
Variations and Stuffings
There are lots of variations where you actually stuff the potato patty and fry. You can stuff it with paneer or spiced chana dal or even chickpeas. I personally don’t like stuffed chaat because for me it takes away from the main star of the dish - aka potatoes! While I have not explored recipes of stuffed Aloo Tikkis, if you have a favorite stuffed variety, leave that down in the comment below and I will add it to my queue!
Tips to Guarantee Perfectly Crisp Aloo Chaat
- Test the oil temperature before frying the patties to ensure the aloo chaat is not greasy, is crispy and light.
- Frying a test patty is a great way to get an idea and feel of the process before cooking the entire batch. Plus, it makes for a good snack as you cook.
- Pack the patties tightly as you shape them to ensure that they don’t break while frying. A good sign, that your patties will not break is if there’s minimal sticking as you shape the potatoes.
- Keep the toppings for chaat ready before you start frying so that you can serve the chaat fresh, hot and ready.
Tools Needed
Ingredients for Aloo Chaat
Scroll to the bottom of this post for the FULL PRINTABLE RECIPE CARD to see all ingredient quantities and to save the recipe for later! You can also scale the recipe based on how many tikkis you want to prepare - the ingredients will automatically be adjusted for you!
For the Aloo Tikki
- Potatoes: Boiled and peeled. You can boil your potatoes over the stove or in the Instant Pot.
- Spices: We’ll season our Aloo Tikki with amchur powder, chaat masala, garam masala, turmeric, Kashmiri red chili powder and salt.
- Rice flour: Helps to get the potatoes crispy and bind all our ingredients together.
- Cilantro: Fresh, finely chopped cilantro will be added into the potato mixture.
- oil: To fry.
For Topping
- Cilantro-Mint Chutney: This chutney is made with green chilies, cilantro, mint, and yogurt. It’s quite spicy!
- Tamarind Chutney: In contrast to the Cilantro-Mint Chutney, this chutney is sweet and tangy to balance out the spiciness.
- Yogurt: I like plain 6% fat yogurt for a good creaminess and flavor.
- Pomegranates: If you don’t want to buy an entire pomegranate and get the seeds out, look for them in a container in the prepared fruit section. It will be pricier, but if you want just the seeds for this recipe, you can use what you need and just snack on the rest!
How to Make This Aloo Tikki Chaat Recipe
Prepare and portion out the mint chutney, tamarind chutney and yogurt into easily accessible bowls or ramekins. You can make the chutney from scratch or use store bought options.
Once the boiled and peeled potatoes are at room temperature, add them to a large bowl along with the cilantro, chaat masala, chili powder, garam masala, amchur, turmeric, salt and rice flour.
Mash well and mix until there are no lumps and the ingredients are mixed well.
Portion the potato mix into 4 equally-sized balls. Use a touch of oil on your hands if needed to pack the potato portions into smooth balls and then pat down into patties. Ensure there are no cracks or crevices.
Heat oil in a pan or wok for shallow frying, add enough oil so that the oil is at least 1 inch deep. Test the oil with a tiny bit of potato to check if the potato rises and floats instantly and gradually changes color.
Once the oil is at the right temperature, add the potato patties to the oil and shallow fry until each side is a deep golden brown and crispy. Flip the patties as needed.
Once the potatoes are ready, serve immediately, topped with yogurt, mint chutney, tamarind chutney and pomegranate. Enjoy!
Is This Aloo Chaat Vegan?▼
Everything except the yogurt for garnish and the yogurt in the cilantro-mint chutney in this recipe is vegan. To make this recipe vegan, simply make your chutney without yogurt and do not garnish with yogurt, or find a vegan yogurt substitute. Also, make sure that you do not fry in ghee.
Is Aloo Chaat Gluten-Free?▼
Some aloo chaat recipes use hing or asafoetida, which is a spice that aids in digestion. However, this spice contains gluten. My recipe excludes this spice, so it is gluten-free. If you were to use it, you can try to find a hing that is gluten-free.
Additionally, some recipes use bread or breadcrumbs to coat the potatoes. I’m using rice flour in this recipe, so that keeps the recipe gluten-free.
can I make This ahead of time?▼
No! I really don’t recommend it at all! Please serve it fresh for the best experience. You get it made right in front of you when you’re enjoying it street-side, so wouldn’t you want the best results at home?
If you want to prep your chaat in advance, then what I would recommend you do is par-fry the potato patties. So you would need to fry them until they are a slight golden brown, just enough to get a thin layer of crispiness are around. Then, you can set them aside and once you are ready to assemble and serve, reheat the oil and fry until they are completely done.
I wouldn’t shape the patties in advance to then refrigerate or freeze them. There’s a chance that condensation may cause excessive moisture in the potatoes, causing the water particles to splutter and possibly breaking the patties as they fry. The best way to refrigerate them would be to par fry and then refrigerate.
Storing Leftover Aloo Chaat
If you do end up with leftover aloo tikki patties, then store the potato patties without toppings in an airtight container or plastic wrap. Your Aloo Tikki patties will stay good in the fridge for up to a week since they are vegan, and we don’t have to worry about any ingredients spoiling. To reheat your patties, the best method would be in an air fryer at 350 F, for 6-10 minutes. Keep checking at one or two minute intervals to ensure that the breadcrumbs aren’t too well done.
If you do not have an air fryer, you can reheat the patties for an initial 30 seconds in the microwave, then heat oil or butter on a pan and continue warming up the patty over the pan. This will allow you to get the patty crispy again. Reheating the potato patty entirely in the microwave will result in a soggy and mushy patty, which we do not want!
When it comes to freezing, I have not had a pleasant experience with freezing potatoes. The texture of the potato is severely degraded as they defrost, ruining the crispiness, texture and taste of your Aloo Chaat. That’s not fun at all!
Serving Suggestions
You can add some more chutney to your Aloo Chaat as your heart desires! You can also top with boondi or sev if you want some more crunchiness. I stuck with just the pomegranates because that’s what I was in the mood for! Other recipes also top their aloo chaat with diced raw onions, but I don’t like that.
What to Eat with Aloo Chaat▼
You don’t really eat anything with Aloo Chaat because it’s a snack. If you wanted a platter of snacks, you would probably have other types of chaat, such as bhel puri (puffed rice over fried dough balls called puris), golgappa or pani puri (fried hollow dough balls with a whole punched in, filled with a tamarind water or cilantro-mint water), and sev puri (similar to pani puri, filled with layers of potatoes and onions and chutneys). If you want a beverage with your chaat, then either choose a refreshing chilled Mango Lassi or make the experience cozy by sipping on some Masala Chai.
Other Snack Recipes!
- Aloo Patties - Potato Stuffed in Puff Pastry
- Paneer Patties - Indian Cottage Cheese in Puff Pastry
- Aloo Samosas
- Indian-Style Spicy Chili Corn
- Crispy Chicken Pakora
- Baked Paneer Jalfrezi Samosa
- Air Fryer Chicken Samosa
What Goes Into These Aloo Tikkis, and What Does Not
A lot of aloo tikki recipes reach for things this one simply does not use, so it is worth being clear about the short ingredients list.
- No bread crumbs and no cornstarch. The binder is 3 to 4 heaping tablespoons of rice flour, and it does two jobs at once: it holds the potato mixture together and it crisps the outside. If rice flour is what you are missing, tapioca starch goes in at the same amount for a slightly chewier bite, and cornstarch works at the same amount with less of that nutty edge.
- No onions in the tikki itself. Plenty of recipes work diced onion into the potato mixture. Here it is potatoes, cilantro, rice flour and the spices, and nothing else.
- This is not papdi chaat. Papdi chaat is built on flat fried flour crisps. In this aloo tikki chaat recipe the base is the potato tikki itself, and there is no papdi anywhere on the ingredients list.
- No deep fryer. You shallow fry potato patties in a pan or wok in at least 1 inch of oil, not in a fryer basket, and you flip them as needed until each side is deep golden brown.
- No stove-hot potatoes. Boil and peel the potatoes, then let them come down to room temperature before the mixture is mashed together, which is what the method calls for.
The Chutneys, Curd and Toppings, Explained
Three toppings do the real work here, and each of them goes by more than one name depending on who is talking. The tamarind chutney is the same thing as imli chutney, since imli is simply the Hindi word for tamarind, and it is the sweet, tangy one. The spicy green chutney is the cilantro-mint chutney, made with green chilies, cilantro, mint and yogurt, and it carries the heat. The white drizzle is yogurt, which is what you will hear called curd across North India, and I use plain 6% fat yogurt for creaminess.
If one of them is missing from your fridge there are honest stand-ins. For the imli chutney, pomegranate molasses diluted with a splash of water gets you the same tart-sweet note, and a date and lime chutney is close as well. For the curd, sour cream has the same texture with a touch more tang, and labneh thinned with a little water works too. Store-bought chutneys are completely fine, as the method itself says, and on a night when you want chaat quickly they are the difference between making this and not.
Portion all of it into small bowls or ramekins before the oil goes on the heat, because the tikkis need to reach the serving plate hot. Fry them, plate them, then spoon over the yogurt, the green chutney and the imli chutney, and finish with the pomegranate. Eat them straight away. Assembled tikkis left standing go soft within minutes, and that is really the only way to get this dish wrong.
Let me know what you think of this recipe in the comments! If you’ve tried this recipe, be sure to post it on social media and tag it with #cookingwithanadi and mention me @cooking.with.anadi. Thank you!
Recipe by Anadi Misra
Crispy, golden Aloo Tikki Chaat made Delhi street-style at home. Spiced potato patties topped with tangy chutneys and yogurt — the ultimate Indian street food starter.
Deep-fried
Rate this recipe ✦
25 min
Prep
12 min
Cook
37 min
Total
2
plates
medium
Level
Ingredients
Ingredients
Tap any quantity to scale
For the aloo tikki
For topping
- Cilantro-Mint Chutney (yogurt variation, use as needed) · make your own
- Tamarind Chutney (use as needed) · make your own
- Yogurt(whipped, use as needed)
- pomegranate(use as needed)
Instructions
- 1
Prepare and portion out the mint chutney, tamarind chutney and yogurt into easily accessible bowls or ramekins. You can make the chutney from scratch or use store bought options.
Prepare and portion out the mint chutney, tamarind chutney and yogurt into easily accessible bowls or ramekins. You can make the chutney from scratch or use store bought options.
- 2
Once the boiled and peeled potatoes are at room temperature, add them to a large bowl along with the cilantro, chaat masala, chili powder, garam masala, amchur, turmeric, salt and rice flour. Mash well and mix until there are no lumps and the ingredients are mixed well.
Once the boiled and peeled potatoes are at room temperature, add them to a large bowl along with the cilantro, chaat masala, chili powder, garam masala, amchur, turmeric, salt and rice flour. Mash well and mix until there are no lumps and the ingredients are mixed well.
- 3
Portion the potato mix into 4 equal sized balls. Use a touch of oil on your hands if needed to pack the potato portions into smooth balls and then pat down into patties. Ensure there are no cracks or crevices.
Portion the potato mix into 4 equal sized balls. Use a touch of oil on your hands if needed to pack the potato portions into smooth balls and then pat down into patties. Ensure there are no cracks or crevices.
- 4
Heat oil in a pan or wok for shallow frying, add enough oil so that the oil is at least 1 inch in depth. Test the oil with a tiny bit of potato to check if the potato rises and floats instantly and gradually changes color.
Heat oil in a pan or wok for shallow frying, add enough oil so that the oil is at least 1 inch in depth. Test the oil with a tiny bit of potato to check if the potato rises and floats instantly and gradually changes color.
- 5
Once the oil is at the right temperature, add the potato patties to the oil and shallow fry until each side is a deep golden brown and crispy. Flip the patties as needed.
Once the oil is at the right temperature, add the potato patties to the oil and shallow fry until each side is a deep golden brown and crispy. Flip the patties as needed.
- 6
Once the potatoes are ready, serve immediately, topped with yogurt, mint chutney, tamarind chutney and pomegranate. Enjoy!
Once the potatoes are ready, serve immediately, topped with yogurt, mint chutney, tamarind chutney and pomegranate. Enjoy!
Did you make this recipe? Tag @cooking.with.anadi on Instagram and hashtag it #cookingwithanadi
Tested & written in Anadi’s kitchen
Recipe history
- April 16, 2026 — Reworked and refreshed for the 2026 relaunch — new photography, restructured and standardized ingredients & instructions.
Filed under
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