Before You Start
Where many pakoras are really batter with a vegetable hidden inside, kanda bhaji turns that balance around, because the onion is the body of the fritter and the besan is only the glue. The onions are cut thin and sprinkled with salt so they give up their own juice, and that juice, together with a modest amount of flour, forms a coating just thick enough to keep the strands together. Fried properly, the cluster that results is loose and spidery, with a great deal more exposed edge than any round, heavily battered fritter could offer, and underneath the spice you taste the sweetness of onion that has begun to caramelise.
Maharashtra associates the dish with the rains more than with any single kitchen, because a plate of bhaji, hot chai and a downpour outside make up the sort of afternoon people in Mumbai and Pune plan weekends around, at home or at a roadside stall. The same idea travels through the rest of India under the names onion pakora and pyaz pakora, generally made with a thicker batter and shaped into rounder pieces, while the Maharashtrian cook is known for using as little batter as possible and for letting the outline stay untidy.
Where It Comes From
Coating vegetables in besan batter and frying them is an old practice all over the subcontinent, with variants recorded from Punjab to Tamil Nadu, so no region can reasonably say it thought of the idea first. Maharashtra's claim is narrower and more convincing: the name kanda bhaji, the habit of using finely cut onion with barely any batter, the untidy shape, and the connection to the rainy months rather than to fried food in general. In Mumbai and Pune there are stalls that sell hardly anything else while the monsoon lasts, something you do not see in the North Indian pakora shops, which usually display a wider mixed tray. Writers who have covered Maharashtrian street food tend to place kanda bhaji as a local specialty inside a much older fritter tradition shared across India, not as a dish with a known inventor, and that seems the sound view considering how long frying in besan has been part of regional Indian cooking.
How to Make It
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Prep
Cut the onions fine and salt them first
Cut the halved onions as finely and evenly as your knife will allow, and separate the layers by finger into loose strands, leaving no clumped half-moons. Scatter a pinch of salt over them and set them aside for 10 minutes. The salt pulls out juice, which later supplies most of the moisture in the coating and explains why almost no water is needed afterwards.
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Prep
Mix the coating right in the bowl of onions
Tip the besan, rice flour, chilli powder, turmeric, ajwain, coriander, green chillies, ginger and remaining salt right into the salted onions. Use your hand to squeeze and turn everything together, which is better than whisking a separate batter to pour over, as the onion juice then does most of the binding and the flour layer stays thin.
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Prep
Use water only if the mix crumbles
You are looking for a heavy, tacky paste that sticks to the onions and would not pour. Only if it still seems dry and crumbly should you sprinkle in water, a teaspoon each time; many batches never need any. Excess water turns the pakoras into flat, oily, dense discs when they should be ragged and light.
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Cook
Bring the oil to medium-high heat
Warm the oil in a kadhai until it is roughly 170 to 180°C (340 to 355°F). Test by dropping in a small piece of the mixture, which should sink briefly, then float up and keep a steady fizz going inside two or three seconds. Oil that is any cooler lets the fritters soak up grease and go soft instead of crisp.
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Cook
Drop in loose, untidy clumps
Take small handfuls of the onion mixture and lower them into the oil without squeezing them into tight balls, since the gaps and trailing edges are exactly where the crunch comes from. Fry five or six at a time and leave space around each one, because a crowded pot cools the oil and produces pale, uneven pakoras.
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Cook
Fry to a deep gold that crackles
Each batch needs about 3 to 4 minutes, with an occasional turn, until the clusters are deep golden brown and the thin edges have darkened slightly. Tapping them with the slotted spoon should give a dry, crackly sound. A pakora that only looks cooked and has not gone properly crisp will turn limp within minutes of leaving the pot.
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Cook
Let them drain on a rack
Transfer the fritters to a wire rack for draining, not onto a plate or paper towels, since those press steam against the underside and the bottom layer softens right away. Wait for the oil to climb back to temperature before the next handful goes in.
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Serve
Eat them within minutes of frying
Kanda bhaji is crispest for about the first ten minutes after frying, while the surface still crackles. Carry it to the table hot, with green chutney, lime to squeeze over it and a cup of tea alongside, which is the customary pairing; do not hold the whole batch under a lid, because the trapped steam softens the crust.
Swaps That Work
When hand slicing gets uneven, a mandoline set to its thinnest blade works nicely and produces an even lighter fritter. One tablespoon of the rice flour can be replaced with a tablespoon of cornflour, which changes the crunch a little without losing it. Spinach leaves, matchstick potato or sliced green chillies may be folded in or swapped for part of the onion in similar amounts, though a plain onion version is what most people in Maharashtra would call the real thing.
Turning the Heat Up or Down
Heat comes from two sources, the red chilli powder and the fresh green chillies, and you can change either one without affecting the other. For something gentler, leave the fresh chilli out and halve the powder, letting ajwain and ginger provide the flavour. For something hotter, add a chopped bird's eye or other fiery green chilli beside the usual one, or work a pinch of cayenne into the mixture; both do the job better than extra standard chilli powder, which tends to flatten the taste of the coating and not sharpen it.
Where Cooks Go Wrong
Too much water is the single most frequent error, and it turns a lacy, onion-led fritter into a flat, heavy and floury one, so trust the moisture in the onions before turning on the tap. Oil that is too cool comes next, usually because cold mixture went in straight after the previous batch and the oil had no time to recover, and the result is greasy pakoras. A crowded pot does the same and also glues the pieces into one mass in place of separate fritters. Finally, thick onion slices stay raw and sulphurous in the centre even when the outside looks well browned.
Keeping and Warming Up Leftovers
To keep: Fry these and eat them straight away, because the crunch they are known for fades within about an hour even when left out at room temperature. Should you have to keep some, cool them uncovered and chill for no more than a day, expecting that they will not crisp again the same way. The raw onion mixture is also better not kept: salted onions go on releasing liquid, so the longer the mixture waits, the wetter and trickier to fry it gets.
To warm up: Spread leftovers in one layer and warm them in a hot oven or an air fryer at about 190°C (375°F) for 5 to 6 minutes. The microwave makes them soft and rubbery and is best avoided. They will not regain the crackle of the first fry, but an oven recovers enough crispness on the outside to make them worth eating, and nothing else gets closer.
Safe Handling
Pick a pot with enough depth that oil does not rise and spill when the onions, still carrying some water, go in, and lower each handful in gently instead of dropping it from a height. Do not leave hot oil unattended, and keep the pot away from the edge of the stove so nobody knocks it over. After each use, strain the oil to remove debris; throw it away when it has darkened, smells off, or smokes at a lower temperature than it did new. Oil used beyond its smoke point tastes worse and develops compounds that you would prefer not to eat. Allow it to cool completely before you move or dispose of it.