Chakli calories
One chakli of about 18 g, a spiral of rice flour and roasted gram dal fried in oil, has about 90 calories; 2 about 180 and 4 about 365. The oil taken up in frying is a third of the number. Packed chakli, by its labels, runs about 85 to 140 a piece, bigger Diwali chaklis at the top.
Chakli is a stiff dough of rice flour and roasted gram dal flour, with butter, sesame and chilli, pressed through a star nozzle into spirals and deep-fried until crisp. Murukku in Tamil Nadu and chakkuli in Karnataka are made the same way, sometimes with urad dal flour in place of the gram dal. It keeps for weeks, which is why it fills Diwali faral boxes.
Crisp fried snacks are light in water and heavy in oil, so per 100 g chakli sits well above most sweets. A single chakli is small, though; a handful is not.
Typical values for a home kitchen, for the portion named next to each number. Other sites often show bigger numbers because they count a bigger serving or a restaurant recipe. Your own katori, roti and oil change the number; Slate adjusts for them.
How many calories are in chakli?
| Portion | Cals | Protein | Carbs | Fat |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 chakli (about 18 g) about 18 g | 90 | 2 g | 10 g | 5 g |
| 2 chaklis about 37 g | 180 | 3 g | 20 g | 9 g |
| 4 chaklis about 74 g | 365 | 7 g | 40 g | 19 g |
| 1 small bowl (about 50 g) about 50 g | 245 | 5 g | 27 g | 13 g |
| 100 g about 100 g | 490 | 9 g | 55 g | 25 g |
How does home chakli compare with outside?
Packed chakli labels run from 474 to 549 calories per 100 g, either side of this page's 490; one label with more oil lists 560. Shop chaklis for Diwali are often bigger than the 18 g one here, up to 25 g.
The range below runs from the lightest label for this size to a 25 g chakli at the richest common label.
| Version | Cals | Fat |
|---|---|---|
| Home | 90 | 5 g |
| Packed or shop | 85 to 140 | 4 to 7 g |
What changes the calories in chakli?
- Oil taken up in frying is about a third of the number; a thicker spiral takes up less per gram, a thin crisp one more.
- Butter in the dough is about 6% of the calories here. Butter chakli recipes with twice the butter add about 6 calories a piece.
- Size: Diwali chaklis of 25 g or more are half as much again as this 18 g one.
- Urad dal flour in place of the gram dal, as in murukku, changes almost nothing per gram.
- Mathri and namak para are richer per 100 g, about 545 and 520, because their dough carries fat before frying.
How were these numbers worked out?
The Indian Nutrient Databank's standard textbooks have no chakli, so Slate uses its open-source rice murukku, a standard chakli dough: 3 cups of rice flour, ¾ cup of roasted gram dal flour, 2 tablespoons each of butter and sesame, fried, making 35, with cups at USDA's weights, IFCT 2017 values, and rice flour and butter from USDA. The databank counts all 2 cups of frying oil as eaten; this page takes the oil taken up as about 14% of the raw weight, the uptake worked out for the samosa on this site, about 3.4 g per chakli, and the finished chakli at 4% moisture, both assumptions. That gives a batch of about 645 g at 490 calories per 100 g and 25% fat; one chakli is a thirty-fifth, about 18 g and 90 calories. Two labels check it within 15%: Charliee's butter chakli at 474 calories per 100 g is 4% below and Softy's at 549 is 12% above, and they set the packed range. Every dish on Slate is worked out the same way: how Slate counts calories.
| Ingredient | Raw | Values from |
|---|---|---|
| Rice flour 3 cups | 360 g | USDA FDC 169714 |
| Bengal gram dal (chana) ¾ cup roasted gram dal (dalia), ground; valued as Bengal gram dal | 150 g | IFCT 2017 B001 |
| Butter 2 tablespoons | 28.4 g | USDA FDC 173430 |
| Sesame (til), white 2 tablespoons | 18 g | IFCT 2017 H011 |
| Red chilli powder half a teaspoon | 1.3 g | USDA FDC 171319 |
| Water to knead a stiff dough: an assumption, cooked off in frying | 300 g | no calories |
| Groundnut oil Taken up in frying: about 14% of the raw weight, as worked out for the samosa on this site (an assumption) | 120 g | IFCT 2017 T005 |
Sources
- ICMR-NIN, Indian Food Composition Tables 2017. Bengal gram dal (B001) for roasted gram dal, sesame (H011); values read from github.com/nodef/ifct2017
- Vijayakumar et al., Indian Nutrient Databank (INDB), Current Developments in Nutrition, 2024. Open-source recipe OSR113, rice murukku, 35 pieces; no chakli in The Art & Science of Cooking or Basic Food Preparation
- Indian Nutrient Databank, recipes.xlsx, recipes_servingsize.xlsx and INDB.xlsx (GitHub). Recipe rows, serving count and units for OSR113
- USDA FoodData Central, Rice flour, white (169714) and Butter, without salt (173430). Rice flour and butter values
- Hebbar's Kitchen, Butter murukku (white chakli, butter chakli). Confirms the dough: 3 cups rice flour, ¾ cup urad dal flour, 2 tbsp sesame, 3 tbsp butter; the page uses chakli and murukku for the same snack
- Sakhale et al., oil uptake of lab-fried samosas (as used on the samosa page), and USDA FNDDS samosa. Frying oil taken up: about 14% of the raw weight, worked out on the samosa page from a fresh-oil lab study (18.3% fat) and USDA FNDDS (17.5 g fat per 100 g)
- Softy chakli label (Open Food Facts, 8906077360028). 549 kcal, 33 g fat, 53 g carbohydrate, 10 g protein per 100 g
- Charliee masala butter chakli label (Open Food Facts, 8906005670366). 474 kcal, 21.5 g fat, 62.3 g carbohydrate, 7.7 g protein per 100 g
- Jaimin palak chakli label (Open Food Facts, 8908000870277). 525 kcal, 29 g fat per 100 g
- Adukale khara chakli label (Open Food Facts, 8906095290314). 560 kcal, 41.6 g fat per 100 g; 30 g portion
Questions people ask
How many calories are in 1 chakli?
About 90 for an 18 g chakli, and about 365 for four.
How many calories are in 100 g of chakli?
About 490. Packed labels list 474 to 549 per 100 g.
Is chakli the same as murukku?
The same dough family: rice flour with roasted gram dal or urad dal flour, butter and sesame, pressed through a nozzle and fried. The shapes and the dal differ by region; the calories per gram barely do.
How much fat is in chakli?
About 25 g per 100 g of this recipe, most of it frying oil, and about 5 g in one chakli.
How many calories are in a bowl of chakli?
About 245 for a small bowl of about 50 g, 2 to 3 chaklis.