Kuzhi paniyaram with leftover idli dosa batter and vegetables added to make it colorful and healthy. Spice powders added for making it extra delicious.

Be it for breakfast, snack or dinner, these are wholesome bites with vegetables that kids and your whole family would love.
I love kuzhi paniyarams a lot😍. At my mom’s place, sweet paniyaram and kara paniyaram will be in the regular menu.
About
Kuzhi paniyaram is a ball-shaped south Indian snack made of a rice flour, lentils-base batter and cooked in a special molded pan called appe pan/ paniyaram pan.
You can make it plain or with a simple tempering of mustard and other spices or make it deluxe with vegetables and spice powders.
Nostalgia
We don’t eat it with any side dish, we have it as such. At my in-laws place, kuzhipaniyaram is not considered as breakfast or dinner, just they have it for snack.
And very rarely. So same with Vj, he can take it as snack but not as a meal. So I don’t make that often, otherwise I end up in overeating. I love my mom’s paniyarams a lot and miss it.
At times we make kuzhi paniyaram with leftover idli dosa batter too. It’s often known as pulicha mavu paniyaram.
But these days since we have refrigerator, its not pulicha maavu paniyaram, its just left over batter paniyaram.
When we grind idli dosa batter, unlike our childhood days where mom used to grind and use it within a day, we all grind for a week and reserve the batter in fridge for quick fix of breakfast and dinner.
So each day we can make idli, so we make idli for two times the rest will be made as plain dosa and onion uthappam mostly which are aj and Vj’s favorite.
I make uthappam in kadai at times, podi dosai and paniyaram with leftover idli dosa batter. Mostly make just by adding finely chopped onion, curry leaves, ginger, green chilli.
I have already clicked that and kept. Its been 2 years😜, but somehow did not posted. I saw this vegetable kuzhi paniyaram while I was browsing twitter.
Loved the idea of adding vegetables and thought will make it for breakfast. I added the vegetables that would be suitable for this, but its purely the choice of your favorites or availability. Check out notes section for more tips.
Kuzhi paniyaram instructions
- Chop vegetables firstly – I used ½ of a small carrot, 2 beans, ¼ of a capsicum. Keep all the ingredients ready and temper in a kadai with mustard, urad dal, curry leaves and asafoetida.
2. After that, add the vegetables. Sprinkle required salt and stir fry for 2 mins in medium or low flame.
3. Mix the vegetables with batter and add turmeric, red chilli powder. Mix well furthermore.
4. Heat paniyaram pan, grease with few drops of oil and pour the batter, in each shallow. Cook covered for 1 minute in medium flame. Flip and cook until golden on both sides.
Serve kuzhi paniyaram hot, with chutney or sambar. I had with sambar, but sometimes I have it as such or with sugar too.
Useful links
Recipe card
Masala paniyaram recipe
Ingredients
- 3 cups Idli dosa batter
- ½ cup Vegetables mixed
- 1 Onion
- 1 Green chilli
- 2 teaspoon Ginger finely chopped
- ¼ teaspoon Turmeric
- ½ teaspoon Red chilli powder
- Salt
To temper
- 2 teaspoon Oil
- ½ teaspoon Mustard
- 1 teaspoon Urad dal
- Curry leaves a sprig
- ⅛ teaspoon Asafoetida
Instructions
- Chop vegetables firstly – I used ½ of a small carrot, 2 beans, ¼ of a capsicum.
- Keep all the ingredients ready and secondly, temper in a kadai with mustard, urad dal, curry leaves and asafoetida.
- After that, add the vegetables. Sprinkle required salt and stir fry for 2 mins in medium or low flame.
- Mix the vegetables with batter and add turmeric, red chilli powder. Mix well furthermore.
- Heat paniyaram pan, grease with few drops of oil and pour the batter, in each shallow.
- Cook covered for 1 minute in medium flame. Flip and cook until golden on both sides.
Notes
- If you are adding just carrot, you can add as such too.
- Adding green chilli is purely optional, I like spicy bite of chilli here and there. If kids are eating skip it.
- If the batter is not sour, you can add tomatoes too.
- You can add finely chopped coriander leaves to the batter. Gives nice flavour.
- Any left over poriyals too to the batter and make for snack.
- Depending on the oil you add, it will turn from cripy to soft. More oil crispy, less- soft.
Subashini N
I usually make it simple just like how you have mentioned - with onion, grated carrot, coriander leaves, ginger along with the tempering... addition of other vegetables and chilli powder sounds interesting...
Sangeetha Ganeshbabu
Going to try it soon.my sil tried it and said it was good.