Medhu vada is a South Indian snack, starter, or appetizer. It’s made of lentil base, spiced up with ginger and green chilli, pepper powder, then deep-fried as crispy vadas/fritters. To define its texture, it’s crispy, crunchy on the outside, soft and spongy on the inside. This is arrived by rolling the dough into a ball, then made a hole in the center and flattened it as a disc to deep fry in the oil. The science behind the hole in the center is to help the vada to cook evenly inside out, leaving any uncooked part in the middle.
Traditionally, this vada dough is made from a stone grinder (ural). The result would be out of the world, and there’ll be no chance of failure. In today’s fast-paced world, people rely on shortcuts. You can either grind in the wet grinder or mixer grinder. Again, a wet grinder would yield a better, fluffier dough compared to a mixer grinder, resulting in a denser and crispier vada. But many households may not have a wet grinder, this recipe helps you to get the nearest result as vadas made from a wet grinder.
There are a lot of variations in it. You can dip this in Sambar to make Sambar vada. In rasam, to make Rasa vada. In curd to make curd vada. I made a twist by adding boiled, mashed potato for the dense texture inside and rice flour for the crispy texture outside.
It’s the most demanded and wanted accompaniment for Pongal. Pongal is a rice and lentil base cooked to perfection which is mashed to a smooth and creamy texture, tempered with pepper, ginger, drizzled with aromatic ghee, garnished with cashews…in short, it’s a scrumptious one-pot dish. As a variation, I tried with Foxtail millet/thinai in the place of raw rice, you should try my Thinai/Foxtail millet Pongal.
This recipe helps you to achieve the restaurant-style Medhu vadas in their texture, appearance, and taste. I have insisted on a few tricks and techniques to adhere to attain the restaurant result. It involves washing, soaking the dal, beating the dal mixture with hands to incorporate air into it (Refer notes below for details). Let’s jump into the recipe.
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Wash the whole urad dal 4-5 times till you get clear water. Then soak it for 2 hours at room temperature and 1 hour in the refrigerator.
Dry grind the chopped green chilli and ginger in the mixer.
Take the soaked dal from the refrigerator and drain the water and add it to the ground green chilli and ginger paste and run them dry in the mixer.
Now, stir the dal mixture from bottom to top with the help of a spatula. This helps with even grinding.
Then add 1 tbsp of cold water and grind it again for some time. Then, again toss the dal. Add another tbsp of cold water, run the mixer again.
Repeat these 2 more times, till you reach a soft, smooth, fluffy dough. It’ll need 4-5 tbsp of cold water in total, which you need to add in intervals. Do not overwater the dough, carefully add it 1 tbsp at a time.
Now add ½ cup of boiled, mashed potato. Make sure there is no lump in the potato, mash it evenly. To this add curry leaves, pepper powder, rice flour.
Then add asafoetida powder and salt. Combine everything together.
Finally, add the ground dal flour, mix it with the potato mixture.
And beat it vigorously for 4-5 minutes consistently.
You’ll get a fluffier dough. It’ll help the dough grow in volume (Refer notes).
Heat oil in a flat, thick bottomed pan or kadai in medium flame. Drop a small pinch of dough in the oil, if it comes up immediately without browning, then the oil is perfect to fry. Wet your hands and the plastic wrap.
Roll a ball from the dough and make a hole in the center.
And then flatten it as a disc. Work with wet hands, so the dough will not stick to your hands.
Drop them carefully into the hot oil, make small batches of 3-4, flip them frequently for even browning and cooking of the vadas. Once turn golden brown, drain them on a kitchen tissue. Similarly, fry vadas with the rest of the dough.
Your soft and crispy Medhu vada are ready to be served with Onion Chutney, Coconut coriander chutney, Araicchuvitta tiffin sambar.
Or with beetroot chutney, Araicchuvitta tiffin sambar.
It also goes well with Thinai/foxtail millet Pongal as well.
Recipe card
Preparation time: 10 minutes
Cooking time: 15 minutes
Cuisine: South Indian
Category: Appetizers
Yields: 15-20 (depending on the size)
Author: Manimala
Ingredients:
Black gram/urad dal – 1 cup
Boiled,mashed potato – ½ cup
Rice flour – 2 tbsp
Chopped Ginger – 1 tsp
Chopped Green chilli – 3 nos
Chopped curry leaves – 1 sprig
Pepper powder – ½ tsp
Asafoetida powder – a pinch
Salt – to taste
Oil – for frying
Instructions:
- Wash the whole urad dal 4-5 times till you get clear water.
- Then soak it for 2 hours at room temperature and 1 hour in the refrigerator.
- Dry grind the chopped green chilli and ginger in the mixer.
- Take the soaked dal from the refrigerator and drain the water and add it to the ground green chilli and ginger paste and run them dry in the mixer.
- Now, stir the dal mixture from bottom to top with the help of a spatula. This helps with even grinding. Then add 1 tbsp of cold water and grind it again for some time. Then, again toss the dal. Add another tbsp of cold water, run the mixer again.
- Repeat these 2 more times, till you reach a soft, smooth, fluffy dough. It’ll need 4-5 tbsp of cold water in total, which you need to add in intervals. Do not overwater the dough, carefully add it 1 tbsp at a time.
- Now add ½ cup of boiled, mashed potato. Make sure there is no lump in the potato, mash it evenly.
- To this add curry leaves, pepper powder, rice flour, asafoetida powder and salt. Combine everything together.
- Finally, add the ground dal flour, mix it with the potato mixture, and beat it vigorously for 4-5 minutes consistently to get a fluffier dough. It’ll help the dough grow in volume (Refer notes).
- Heat oil in a flat, thick bottomed pan or kadai in medium flame. Drop a small pinch of dough in the oil, if it comes up immediately without browning, then the oil is perfect to fry.
- Wet your hands and the plastic wrap. Roll a ball from the dough and make a hole in the center and then flatten it as a disc. Work with wet hands, so the dough will not stick to your hands.
- Drop them carefully into the hot oil, make small batches of 3-4, flip them frequently for even browning and cooking of the vadas.
- Once turn golden brown, drain them on a kitchen tissue. Similarly, fry vadas with the rest of the dough.
- Your soft and crispy Medhu vada are ready to be served with Onion Chutney, Coconut coriander chutney, Beetroot chutney, Araicchuvitta tiffin sambar.
- It also goes well with Thinai/foxtail millet Pongal as well.
Notes:
- Wash the dal at least 4-5 times. Rubbing the dal with your fingers will help to get rid of the white substance on the dal. Finally, when you wash the water should be clear.
- Soaking time should be a minimum of 3 hours to a maximum of 4 hours. Over soaking will spoil the texture of the vada.
- Soak 2 hrs at room temperature, remaining 1-2 hrs in the refrigerator. This helps the vada to swell in size and prevents overheating of the mixie while grinding.
- Dry grind the dal first, then gradually add 1 tbsp of cold water at a time. Adding cold water prevents the mixie from getting overheated by the continuous running of the grinder. Also, prevents the dal from getting heated which may result in flat and bitter vadas.
- Be extremely cautious while adding water to the dough, do not overwater as it may thin the dough resulting in flat vadas.
- Use the drained cold water to grind the dough. To be economical, you can use the remaining drained water to wet your hands while molding the vadas on the plastic wrap.
- The inclusion of boiled and mashed potato helps to get a fluffier and dense vada as done in restaurants. It also raises the volume of the dough. Make sure the potato is boiled well and mashed with no lumps. I prefer to boil the potatoes in a steamer as it’ll not absorb too much water while cooking.
- Adding rice flour/powder is optional. If u want crunchy, crispy vada, do include it.
- Adding spices will enhance the taste, you can grind the ginger and chilli along with the dough, as it’ll not be caught in between your bites. Similarly, I added pepper powder in the place of whole pepper to avoid being thrown away by your loved ones (one reason to make them eat the pepper for its nutritional and medicinal value).
- Always add salt while mixing the dough with spices. Do not add during grinding as it may thin your dough. So, add your salt, at a later stage while beating the dough.
- Beating the ground dough with spices and potato for 4-5 minutes is mandatory to get fine results like in restaurants. Beating consistently with hands helps to aerate the dough well, by incorporating air into the dough making it more voluminous and fluffier.
- After you roll balls from the dough with wet hands, make the center and then flatten it. This helps the vada to be denser and fatter. If you flatten first and then make the hole, it increases the diameter more thus resulting in flat vadas.
- Deep fry in medium hot oil, to ensure even cooking and browning. The hole in the vada helps for the same reason.
- If you have excess vada dough, store it in the refrigerator and use it within the day or the next. If you find the dough has loosened up, add some rice flour to make it thick. But it’s always best to grind fresh and fry them immediately. It avoids vada absorbing too much oil while frying.
Now time for my Kitchen secrets…😉😍
It’s always fun to play with the ingredients in the kitchen. This session helps you to handle your leftover food or to do any variation, add some twist to amaze your loved ones.
Here, I came up with an idea🤔💡💡, if you have fussy eaters who do not want to take veggies or greens in their diet. Don’t worry, this method will help them to consume it without missing their nutrients.
Include fresh carrots by grating, or adding boiled, mashed carrot along with the dough. You can try this with beetroot, pumpkins, gourds (but make sure you squeeze excess moisture from it after grating as it shouldn’t change the consistency of the dough).
Similarly, you can chop greens and add them to the dough before frying.
For a healthier version, you can try with whole urad dal with skin, with the black husk, as it’s packed with nutrients. But this dal needs a longer time soaking, maybe 6 hours. Then grind them and make the same dough as normal urad dal.
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