Sambar vadai recipe (With hotel sambar recipe)

Sambar vadai recipe - urad dal vadai, soft that just melts in your mouth soaked in mild and flavorful sambar that you can drink like soup.

Make it for special occasions, or for guests meals, this is truly a winner. You can make it with leftover vada as well.

Check out my thayir vadai recipe and rasam vadai recipe in this website.

I recently only developed taste for sambar vada, especially the one from Murugan idli shop.

After their chutneys, I like their sambar vada. I have it often but the best sambar vada here in Singapore is from Nalan restaurant near Funan IT mall.

Their sambar is the best and love their sambar vada a lot. Both these restaurants inspire me to try sambar vada at home.

Mostly I am lazy to make sambar for sambar vadai 😛.

These days I soak only less urad dal and grind for festivals as it always goes for waste.

We cook lot of things and it will be heavy to eat vadai too on top of it. This time for Ganesh Chaturthi I soaked more and ground in wet grinder especially to try sambar vada.

Co incidentally, I saw the same in Vj TV show Samayal samyal. I have heard about making sambar by cooking raw onions instead of sauteeing and adding to it. But never tried as I thought it won’t smell good.

When I saw in cooking show, I thought why not give it a try and to my surprise it turned out really good. And I learnt it is the secret to hotel sambar.

I adapted the recipe but only changed the method of making here and there to my convenience.

And I know I am  going to make this often here after until I get bored of this.

You can either make vadas especially for making sambar vada or recylce the vadais already made too 😁. Just soak in hot water, make sambar and soak the vada in it.

Step by step photos

Make vadai

1. For making vada, soak urad dal for 2 to 3 hours. For best results, I keep inside fridge after 2 hours for an hour minimum before grinding. This gives fluffy batter.
2. Drain water completely and grind to a smooth paste by adding little ice cold water or ice cubes at a time.
3. Once smooth transfer to a mixing bowl.

4. Heat oil, grease your hands with water and make a small ball out of vadai batter.

Move the ball to fingers and make a hole in the center with your thumb.

5. Drop in hot oil by inverting your hands over oil and gently moving your fingers.

Cook in medium flame both sides until golden and crisp. Maintain oil temperature by regulating the heat, otherwise it will drink oil.

6. Drain in paper towel. Soak the vada in hot water. Add little salt in the water. Let it get soaked.

Prepare sambar

1. For sambar, pressure cook toor dal with 1 & ½ cups of water for 4 whistles in medium flame.

Once done, mash it well. Add turmeric, red chilli, finely chopped tomato, peeled small onion, slit green chillies, curry leaves, tamarind extract.

Soak tamarind in hot water for ½ hour and extract juice with a cup of water.

2. Pressure cook for a whistle. In a kadai, splutter mustard and lower the flame. Add sambar powder and quickly give it a stir.

3. Add the pressure cooked dal mixture to it.Mix well and adjust water consistency.

You may have to add 1 & ½ cups water to 2 cups approximately.

Bring to boil and add coriander leaves, asafoetida powder, jaggery or sugar and top with ghee. Switch off the flame.

Assembling

1. Now gently squeeze the excess water in the soaked vada, without changing its shape and arrange in the serving bowl.

Add hot sambar over it. Garnish with finely chopped onions before serving.

Always serve hot! Add raw onions just before serving. We all  loved it and for the first time Aj too  ate it.

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Sambar vadai recipe

Sambar vadai is urad dal vadai, soaked in mild and flavourful sambar. I recently only developed taste for sambar vada, especially the one from Murugan idli shop.

Course Snack

Cuisine Indian

Prep Time 30 minutes

Cook Time 30 minutes

Soak time 2 hours

Servings 6 people

1x2x3x

Cup measurements

Ingredients

Ingredients for sambar

• ½ cup Toor dal
• ½ cup Small onion
• 1 Tomato
• 2 Green chilli
• 1 teaspoon Tamarind tightly packed
• 3 teaspoon Sambar powder heaped
• 1 teaspoon Red chilli powder
• ¼ teaspoon Turmeric powder
• ¼ teaspoon Asafoetida powder
• 2 tablespoon Coriander leaves chopped
• 1 sprig Curry leaves
• ½ teaspoon Jaggery or sugar
• 1 teaspoon Ghee
• 1 tablespoon Oil
• ½ teaspoon Mustard
• Salt As needed

For vadai

• ½ cup Urad dal – ½ cup
• 1 teaspoon Black pepper powdered coarsely, do not use fine powder
• 1 teaspoon Cumin seeds
• Salt as needed
• ⅛ teaspoon Asafoetida

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Instructions

Make vadai

• For making vada, soak urad dal for 2 to 3 hours. For best results, I keep inside fridge after 2 hours for an hour minimum before grinding. This gives fluffy batter.
• Drain water completely and grind to a smooth paste by adding little ice cold water or ice cubes at a time.
• Once smooth transfer to a mixing bowl.
• Mix salt and asafoetida.
• Heat oil, grease your hands with water and make a small ball out of vadai batter.
• Move the ball to fingers and make a hole in the center with your thumb.
• Drop in hot oil by inverting your hands over oil and gently moving your fingers.
• Cook in medium flame both sides until golden and crisp. Maintain oil temperature by regulating the heat, otherwise it will drink oil.
• Drain in paper towel.
• Soak the vada in hot water. Add little salt in the water. Let it get soaked.

Prepare sambar

• For sambar, pressure cook toor dal with 1 & ½ cups of water for 4 whistles in medium flame. If your dal is hard to cook, recommend to soak ½ hour prior cooking.
• Soak tamarind in hot water meanwhile for minimum 15 minutes. Extract tamarind juice with 1cup water.
• Once dal is done, mash it well. Add turmeric, red chilli, finely chopped tomato, peeled small onion, slit green chillies, curry leaves, tamarind extract.
• Pressure cook for a whistle.
• In a kadai, splutter mustard and lower the flame or better switch off. Add sambar powder in the heat itself and quickly give it a stir.
• Add the pressure cooked dal mixture to it immediately. Mix well and adjust water consistency.
• You may have to add 1 & ½ cups water to 2 cups approximately.
• Bring to boil and add coriander leaves, asafoetida powder, jaggery or sugar and top with ghee. Switch off the flame.
• Now gently squeeze the excess water in the soaked vada, without changing its shape and arrange in the serving bowl.
• Add hot sambar over it. Garnish with finely chopped onions before serving.

Video

Notes

• The sambar amount given here may give more than needed for sambar vadai.
• Number of vadais depend on urad dal quality, if you grind in grinder or mixer.
• Salt and tamarind should be less in this sambar so that the sambar is drinkable.
• Adding ghee is optional.
• Take care not to burn the sambar powder. Otherwise the whole taste will be spoiled.
• Since we fry the sambar powder in oil, it won’t be that much spicy, so if you want to add spice increase red chilli powder and green chilli.
• The urad dal can be slightly on coarse side. This will give you firm vadai.
• The sambar gets thickened as it cools, so make sure the consistency is according to that.

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