Vadakari (Vada Curry) is one of the popular side dish in Tamilnadu. Vadikari is the best combination for Idly, dosa, Kal dosa and even for Pongal. In some specific district of TamilNadu, we can find Pongal with Vadakari as one of the breakfast menu in hotels. The aroma of masala with crispness of vada makes this dish extraordinarily tasty. I usually like Idli with Vadakari combination. This goes well even with Chapati. So why not prepare this all-rounder side dish today itself !
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| Vada Curry Recipe | Vadakari Recipe |
| Servings | 4 |
| Preparation Time | 1 hour |
| Cooking Time | 1 hour |
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| Vada Curry Recipe | Vadakari Recipe |
Ingredients For Masala:
| Onion | 2 |
| Tomato | 2 |
| Bay leaves | 1 |
| Salt | To taste |
| Coconut Milk | 1 Cup |
| Coriander leaves | Few |
Grinding Ingredients For Masala:
| Ginger-Garlic Paste | 2 tablespoon |
| Fennel Seeds(Sombu) | 2 teaspoon |
| Turmeric Powder | 1/2 teaspoon |
| Green Chillies | 2 |
| Red Chilli powder | 1/2 teaspoon |
| Cinnamon sticks | 1 |
| Cardamom | 2 |
| Cloves | 3 |
Ingredients for Vada:
| Bengal Gram(Channa dal) | 1 Cup |
| Salt | To taste |
| Oil | For Frying |
- Soak the Chana dal in water for 1 hour.
- After 1 hour, drain the water from channa dal and take 1 handfull of soaked dal, keep it aside and grind the remaining channa dal in mixer to a coarse paste without adding water. Take he coarsed paste and add the channa dal that is kept aside and mix well. Keep this ground paste aside
- Lets prepare the masala now. Take the grinding ingredients for masala in a mixer
- Grind the ingredients to a nice paste by adding a little water
- Take 2 teaspoon of the ground masala and add it to the ground vada flour
- Mix the vada flour with salt and masala. Here we are adding masala to give the vada a nice flavour
- Heat oil in pan, when the oil is hot, put a pinch of vadai flour and it it raises immediately, then the oil is hot enough. gently drop small balls of vada flour like we do for pakoda.
- Fry the vadas in oil on both the sides and then when the bubbles ceases, gently take the vadas and keep it in a bowl with a tissue paper to drain the excess oil
- After the vada cool off, broke it in halves and keep it ready
- Heat some oil in a pan, and add broken bay leaves
- Add the finely chopped onions and add a pinch of salt. Fry the onions till it turns transparent.
- When the onions becomes transparent, add the finely chopped tomatoes. Now add the required salt for the vadakari so that the tomatoes fry completely and becomes puree
- Now add the ground masala, one half of the coconut milk and 1 cup of water and mix well
- When the mixture starts to boil, add the broken vada pieces and mix well
- Allow the mixture to boil and then add the remaining coconut milk and mix well
- When the vadakari starts t boil, garnish with coriander leaves and remove from flame
- The yummy vadakari is ready to serve with Idli/Dosa/Pongal
Tips:
- We should not grind the channa dal smoothly. The batter should be coarse. So we can take 2 teaspoon of channa dal separately and grind the rest to a coarse paste
- We can add little mint leaves after the tomatoes are cooked which will give a nice aroma to the vadakari
- Green chillies is optional but it brings a unique flavour to vadakari in addition to red chilli powder. But if you dont prefer green chillies, we can just add red chillies or red chilli powder
- We dont need to make patties with the vada flour. We can just take small quantities and then drop in oil and fry it as anyway we are going to break the vada into pieces
- If you are diet specific, we can avoid frying vadas in oil. Instead we can make thin patties and deep cook it in a tawa by adding little oil
- The masala ingredients for grinding mentioned above gives a good aroma. But if you dont want too much masala, we can reduce the quantity of fennel seeds and ginger-garlic paste
- If, after cooking, you feel the gravy is too thick, you can boil some water and add it to the gravy and heat the gravy again. Do Not add cold water to the gravy to make it dilute as it spoils the taste
- If you are health specific and do not want to add coconut milk, then we can add 1/2 cup of coconut milk and remaining 1/2 cup normal milk. But coconut milk gives a good flavour to the vadakari
- If you feel squeezing coconut milk is hectic, we can also grind 1/2 cup of grated coconut with the grinding masala ingredients
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| Vada Curry Recipe | Vadakari Recipe |