How To Make Masala Dosa (home style)
Masala Dosa is my all time vegetarian favorite. Great snack or a light meal
Yield: 10 persons
Cost: 12
Equipment
- large flat pan to make the dosa (pancake)
- Flat spoon
Materials
- 1 1/2 cups rice I buy the broken rice from the Indian store. Tell them you plan to make Dosa or idli (another type of dish)
- 3 cups urad dhal this white lentils is important as it gives, body, flavor and taste to the dosa. It also helps with the fermentation of the batter
- 1 cup oil
- salt
- 1 teaspoon fenugreek seeds
Instructions
Soak The Ingredients
- Take the rice and urad dhal and place in bowl
- Add the salt and fenegreek seeds to the above mixture
- Soak the rice and dhal in room temperature water over night.
Make Batter
- Use a food processor to grind the soaked mixture into a fairly smooth paste. It is ok if the batter is a bit gritty. Make the consistency reasonable thick so you can spread it evenly using a flat container as you see me doing the video below.
- Allow the batter to ferment for 3 to 4 hours. If the weather is hot as we see here in Australia then 1 to 2 hours may be all you need. In winter you can coax the fermentation process by adding some yeast to the batter. I add 1 teaspoon to the above quantity and place the bowl in the warmest part of the kitchen. Or preheat the oven to just above room temperature and place bowl in oven for 15 minutes.
Making The Dosa On The Pan
- Heat up the pan to a medium heat. This will be a trial and error run to find the right setting on your stove to get the best heat to cook the pancakes golden brown.
- I normally season the pan with an onion that I half cut and rub the surface of the pan with the onion. I start off by heating the pan, then sprinkle some water onto the pan. Once the water has evaporated I dribble cooking oil on to the pan and then with the onion I spread it in a circular manner over the entire surface of the pan. In between making each pancake I will repeat the process. It helps seals the pan and as well as adds flavor to the next round of pancakes I am about to make.
- I then dribble some oil on to the pan and pour a cup of batter in the middle of the pan. Using a flat round surface of a spoon or ladle I spread the batter in a circular fashion until I have a large pancake (dosa) on the pan.
- I then spread a spicy tomato relish I make to season the dosa. Make sure you just add a small amount as it should not take over from the dosa flavor.
- Next a place blobs of butter and spread this over the surface before I add a spicy turmeric flavored potato and pea filling called Paliya in the middle of the cooking dosa. This will be the filling.
- As the dosa cooks I then stat to roll it over the potato filling. Once the outside is golden brown take off the stove and serve with Sambhar (lentil and eggplant curry) and cocunut chutney. I shall add recipes for the potato filling, cocunut chutney and Sambhar curry in my next posts. Look out for them
Notes
I grew in South India in a city called Bangalore. As a young lad one of my favorite weekend snacks when allowed to leave the boarding school on a Sunday was to duck into an Udupi restaurant near school, called Gautaams for a Masala Dosa.
I have been having a few attempts at making this vegetarian dish that will appeal to both vegetarians as well as meat eaters.
Its fairly easy to make, just takes a bit of preparation and away you can go making dosa yourself.
Served with Potato filling and Sambhar curry.
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