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Vegan potato curry puff fried to a crisp golden brown on a plate.
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5 from 37 votes

Curry Puff Recipe (Potato)

A savory, flaky and crispy curry puff recipe with potato filling- easily made vegan or vegetarian- that uses cupboard staples. Delicious and perfect for meal prep as it tastes good hot and cold!
Prep Time30 minutes
Cook Time30 minutes
Wrapping time40 minutes
Course: Appetizer, Breakfast, Side Dish, Snack
Cuisine: singaporean, Southeast Asian
Servings: 24 mini curry puffs
Calories: 129kcal
Author: Zen

Equipment

  • Metal (or other heat-proof) bowl
  • Wooden spoon
  • Rolling Pin Oil or flour before using
  • Wooden chopstick To test the temperature of the oil. Substitute: wooden spoon or food thermometer
  • Wire mesh
  • Kitchen towels

Ingredients

For the vegetarian curry puff dough

  • 0.55 lb All purpose flour (250g)
  • 0.11 lb Rice flour (50g) Don't use glutinous rice flour!
  • 0.11 lb Corn flour (50g) Substitute: tapioca flour
  • 0.11 lb Neutral vegetable oil (50g) Don't use olive or peanut oil as they're strongly flavoured.
  • 0.11 lb Margarine (50g) Substitute: butter or lard
  • 4.59 oz cold water (130g) It needs to be cold to react with the hot melted fats later

For the potato filling

  • Neutral vegetable oil for frying Don't use olive oil as it's for deep frying or peanut as it has a strong taste
  • 2 stalks curry leaves Before portioning out the potato filling later when wrapping the puffs, remove the stems so that they don't poke through the dough
  • 1 red onion Minced. Yellow will do but red is sweeter Substitute: shallots
  • 1.32 lb potato diced (600g)
  • 2 Tablespoons curry powder
  • 1 Teaspoon stock powder Substitute: liquid stock or msg. If you're not vegetarian or vegan, chicken or ikan bilis stock powder/ liquid stock works well too. If you leave this out, remember to season the dough!
  • Water to cover the potatoes If you used liquid stock above, decrease the water here accordingly
  • Salt, to taste

Instructions

Making the dough

  • Before you start. make sure you have cold water on hand. (This is necessary for a flaky, crisp dough.)
    Mix the 3 flours in a heat-proof bowl and put aside.
  • Heat up the oil and margarine in a pan or pot. When the mixture has all melted and is very hot, carefully pour it into the flours and use a wooden spoon to mix thoroughly.
    Note: If you use a metal bowl, note that the parts of the bowl in contact with the mixture will also heat up so you don't want to be touching them with your bare skin!
  • Add cold water and mix with a wooden spoon till a soft dough forms.
    Note: If you decide to finish the kneading by hand (the dough doesn't stick and I like to do so to make sure there are no hidden flour pockets), make sure the dough is cool enough to be touched first!
  • Cover the dough and rest for a minimum of 15 minutes.
    Note: Making the filling will take more than 15 minutes after accounting for the time needed for the mixture to cool down !

Making the filling

  • Whilst the dough is resting, prepare the filling. Heat vegetable oil in a pan then fry the onion and curry leaves till the onion turns translucent.
  • Add the diced potatoes and cook till golden. Add the curry powder and saute for 1 minute,
  • Add enough water to cover the potatoes. If using, add the stock powder (for liquid stock, the amount of water should then be decreased correspondingly) and stir to mix thoroughly. Taste and add salt as required, then allow mixture to come to a boil.
  • Simmer till the potatoes are slightly pasty and allow to cool

Folding the puffs

  • Whilst the mixture is cooling, return to working on rolling out the dough. Make sure the rolling pin and surface you work on is floured or oiled to prevent the mixture from sticking. Divide the dough into 4 equal balls, leave 3 balls in the bowl and cover again.
    Note: I have a video on the curry puff dough rolling and wrapping process in the post. It will make things much clearer!
  • Roll the 1 ball of dough that you have taken out into a cylindrical log, then cut (using a dough scraper or knife) into 6 approximately equal pieces. You can also use your hands to pinch out the 6 smaller pieces but this may result in more variation in the size of the dough.
    Note: this makes mini bite-sized puffs. Divide into fewer pieces if you want bigger bites!
  • Roll out each piece of dough into a circle of about 9 cm diameter (approximately 2mm thick).
    Note: It will take practice to make the dough circular, but the more circular the dough is, the easier it is to wrap the curry puffs and the rounder your rolled-out dough.
  • Place approximately 1 tablespoon of filling in the centre of the dough then fold the dough into half (to form a semi circle)
    Note: you could actually use up to 1.5 Tablespoons of filling, if you're good at wrapping! Beginners should start with a less ambitious amount as burst out filling burns easily :)
  • Pinch the edges of the potato puff together in your preferred style. I like the pinch and fold method where you pinch the very end of the border, then fold it down. The dough here will be thicker (as there are now 2 layers) so pinch the dough and fold again. Repeat till you've reached the other end of the dough then plate.
  • Once you've rolled and wrapped the 6 pieces of dough, repeat the folding Steps with the other 3 pieces of dough in the covered bowl.
  • For freezing: The karipaps can be frozen at this stage for future use. If eating now, continue on.
  • To eat now: prepare for deep frying by heating up a deep pot or wok half-filled with oil. Make sure the oil is hot enough before adding the curry puffs- to check, place a wooden chopstick into the oil. If many bubbles form around the chopstick, you can start deep frying.
    Tip: Don't add too many curry puffs at a time, or the temperature of the oil will drop.
  • Once the curry puffs turn light brown, use a wire mesh to remove them from the oil and place them on a plate lined with kitchen towels to absorb any excess oil. Enjoy!

Video

Notes

Meal prep The filling can be made the day before the dough. You want the filling to be cool before you start wrapping these vegetarian potato puffs so making them on different days is good. Moreover, curries always taste better when made the day before! 
Other ways to wrap Watch my video on how to assemble the puffs or if you are lazy to pinch the edges of the curry puffs together, there are also curry puff crimps to hasten the process up, but the resulting curry puff is nowhere as pretty!
Variations I like to add hard boiled eggs (cut into quarters) to the filling to create variations in the texture. If you plan on doing so, you will need larger curry puffs (so you roll out larger circles, which would mean the resulting yield from this recipe will be less than 24 curry puffs). Alternatively, you could cut the eggs into smaller pieces, but I find smaller pieces too fiddly to work with.
Tip When plating the vegetable curry puffs (pre-frying), make sure there is space in between so that the dough does not stick to each other and tear.
Storage The karipaps can be fried from frozen (ie without defrosting) but you will need to add 5-7 minutes to the frying time of each puff.
Note: the nutritional information is an estimate automatically calculated using the WPRM recipe maker and I am not responsible for its veracity.

Nutrition

Calories: 129kcal | Carbohydrates: 17g | Protein: 2g | Fat: 7g | Saturated Fat: 1g | Polyunsaturated Fat: 3g | Monounsaturated Fat: 2g | Trans Fat: 0.01g | Cholesterol: 0.01mg | Sodium: 155mg | Potassium: 88mg | Fiber: 2g | Sugar: 1g | Vitamin A: 87IU | Vitamin C: 5mg | Calcium: 18mg | Iron: 1mg