Name: Vada
Prep time: 200 min
Cook time: 30 min
Total time: 30 min
Ingredients: 2 cups Black gram dal (Soaked for 3-6 hrs in water); ½ tsp Pepper powder; 3 Green chillies; 2" Ginger; 1 Onion (Chopped finely); Required amount of water; Salt to taste; Oil for deep frying; 2 tsp Cumin seeds

Vada

22 Jan 2016

by Deepthi (in memoriam)

Prep Time

200 minutes

Cook Time

30 minutes

Total Time

30 minutes

Background

Vada (Black gram fritters) is a doughnut shaped fritter made from black gram, which is crispy on the outside and fluffy on the inside. This is a very famous breakfast/snack in South India. It goes very well with sambar or coconut chutney

Ingredients

2 cups Black gram dal (Soaked for 3-6 hrs in water)
½ tsp Pepper powder
3 Green chillies
2" Ginger
1 Onion (Chopped finely)
Required amount of water
Salt to taste
Oil for deep frying
2 tsp Cumin seeds

Instructions

Soak the black gram in water for 3-6 hrs or overnight.
Drain the water from black gram dal.
Grind together dal, pepper, green chilli, ginger and salt with very little water just enough to grind.
Beat the batter with hand in order to ferment it for 5-10 min. Mix the chopped onions and cumin seeds with this batter.
Heat the oil for deep frying and maintain the heat in medium low.
For every vada, dip your hand in water and immediately place sufficient batter in your palm and shape it into a doughnut and drop in the heated oil for deep frying.
Keep making the doughnut shaped fritters until you exhaust the batter.
When the vada has light brown color on the outside, it can be removed from the oil.
It goes very well with coconut chutney.

Tips

1. While grinding the dal, care should be taken not to add more water.
. The ground batter should neither be very hard nor it should be very loose.
3. One should be able to shape the batter into doughnut shape.
4. If the batter becomes very loose then one can add 1Tbsp rice flour to it.
5. If the batter is very hard, the vada will also be very hard instead of being soft and fluffy.