Slightly fry rice and urud flours in a kadai (vaanali in Tamil) with butter about 2 min. I use an iron vaanali over medium heat. Dry fry sesame seeds, powder it in a coffee blender, add to the flour. Add baking soda, sukku and cumin powder, mix them.. Salt to taste. Add water (3-4 cups), little by little to make the dough.

Heat oil (vegetable oil -sunflower or saffola), no refine oil please) over medium high flame. Never use high flame. Just drop a pinch of dough in the oil to make sure it is hot enough, when the heat is right the dough will surface on the oil. If oil is not hot enough murukku will not be crisp. Grease the inside of achu (murukku maker). Fill up ¾ of it with the dough.. Here you have a choice. You can directly press the achu over hot oil to make murukkus of desirable size.

. Alternatively, you can grease a jalli Karandi (Tamil, it has holes for oil to drain. see the image). Make the murukku over it, and then place it in oil. Murukku will slide into the oil. You will see bubbles in oil while frying. After a couple of minutes, turn over. While frying, using the Karandi rotate murukku inside the oil for even frying when bubbles subside, murrukku is ready to lift. The whole process may take about 10 minutes. Drain excess oil from murukku on a paper towel.