Order papad online and you will be offered udid, rice, wheat, ragi, potato, moong, nachni and several more, all at roughly the same price, with roughly the same photograph. The listings rarely say what actually changes between them, which is a shame, because the base flour changes almost everything — how thin it rolls, whether it puffs, how fast it burns, and what it is good next to.
MAHASHAKTI PAPAD, made by an SHG in Satara, currently has five of them on UmedMart in the same 500 g pack size, which makes it an unusually clean comparison: one maker, one process, five different flours. Here is what each one does.
Udid: the default one
When somebody just says "papad," this is almost always what they mean. Udid (black gram) papad rolls very thin, is traditionally made with a little alkaline salt that gives it its particular savoury tang, and it is the one that balloons and blisters properly in hot oil. It is also the most assertive in flavour — which is why it works beside a plain varan-bhaat, where it is doing the seasoning.
MAHASHAKTI Udid Papad, 500 g, ₹285.90.
Rice: thinner, milder, and very fast in oil
Rice papad is the Konkan end of the shelf. It is milder than udid, more brittle, and it fries in a blink — two seconds, sometimes less. Take your eyes off the kadhai and it goes from pale to brown before you can lift it out. That speed is also its virtue: it stays light and shatters cleanly, which is why it sits so well beside a coconut-based fish curry or a sol kadhi rather than fighting it.
MAHASHAKTI Rice Papad, 500 g, ₹251.66.
Wheat: chewier, and better roasted than fried
Wheat papad does not puff the way udid does — it stays flatter and firmer, with more chew to it. That makes it slightly disappointing if you were expecting fireworks in the oil, and rather good if you roast it over a flame instead, where it crisps without collapsing. Households that eat papad daily rather than as an occasional treat often keep wheat for exactly that reason.
MAHASHAKTI Wheat Papad, 500 g, ₹228.83.
Ragi (nachni): darker, earthier, and no fireworks
Ragi papad is made from finger millet, and it behaves like a millet — darker in colour, earthier and nuttier in taste, and it puffs only a little. Roasting suits it better than deep frying, which tends to make it heavy. If your household is already eating nachni bhakri or millet in other forms, this is the papad that belongs with it.
MAHASHAKTI Ragi Papad, 500 g, ₹251.66.
Potato: the one children eat first
Potato papad is starch rather than pulse or grain, and it behaves accordingly: it swells dramatically and almost instantly, turning pale and puffy. It is the mildest of the five, which is exactly why it disappears fastest at a table with children at it. It is also the least forgiving of hot oil — a second too long and it browns.
MAHASHAKTI Potato Papad, 500 g, ₹285.90.
Fry, roast, or microwave?
All three work, and they give genuinely different results rather than being degrees of the same thing.
Frying gives the biggest puff and the richest texture. The oil should be hot but not smoking — test with one papad: it should balloon within two or three seconds and stay pale. If it browns before it puffs, the oil is too hot and everything after it will taste scorched.
Roasting over a flame — tongs, direct gas, keep it moving — gives a drier, smokier result and suits wheat and ragi best. It is also the only method where you can taste the flour rather than the oil.
Microwaving works surprisingly well for udid and potato: thirty to forty-five seconds on a plate, no oil at all. It will not blister the way frying does, but it is crisp, and for a weeknight it is the difference between having papad and not bothering.
Keeping them crisp
Sun-dried papad is hygroscopic — it pulls moisture out of humid air, and a papad that has gone soft will not puff. It will sit in the oil and turn leathery instead.
Move them out of the delivery packet into an airtight steel dabba on the day they arrive, keep the dabba away from the stove and the sink, and don't decant a 500 g pack into an open jar on the counter. If a batch has gone limp — which happens to everyone in a wet fortnight — five or six minutes spread out in direct sun usually brings it back. A few minutes in a low oven does the same job if the sun isn't cooperating.
The cousin on the same shelf: shevai
Shevai gets shelved beside papad and is a different thing entirely — hand-extruded noodles, sun-dried, boiled or steamed rather than fried. GHATAIDEVI SHG Jowar Shevai, 200 g, ₹204.32, made by Shree Ghatai Devi Mahila Bachat Gat in Satara, is made from jowar with no maida. It cooks like a short noodle and takes a tadka well. Buy it expecting pasta-adjacent, not papad-adjacent.
If you're buying one
Start with udid — it is the papad most recipes and most people mean, and it is the benchmark everything else is judged against. Add rice if your cooking leans Konkani, wheat if you roast more often than you fry, ragi if millets are already in the house, and potato if there are children at the table. At 500 g a pack these last a long time if you store them properly, so there is no rush to buy all five at once.
Prices and availability above were checked on 18 September 2026 and can change.
Related reading
- Bhagar, Varai, Rajgira or Sabudana? — the fasting papads and chaklis, which are a separate shelf altogether.
- Goda, Kala, Kanda Lasun or Garam? — the masala that goes into what the papad sits beside.
- What Is Indrayani Rice?
- Oats, Jwari, Bajri or Nachni? DIVYNKA's millet cookies
- What "natural" and "chemical-free" actually mean on an SHG label
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