Medu Vada - How to make Medhu Vadai Recipe

Medu Vada or Urad Dal vada is a very easy breakfast item as very few ingredients go into its making. It really tastes well when we add onions and coconut.

This as a perfect combo with idli especially found in south indian hotels.

Ingredients:

1. Urad Dal - 2 cups
2. Curry Leaves - 10 to 12 (finely chopped)
3. Coconut - 2 tbsps (finely chopped not grated)(But I used grated dry coconut powder since I didn't had fresh coconut readily available at that particular moment)
4. Black Peppercorns - 1 tsp (Crushed)
5. Cumin seeds - 1 tsp
6. Salt - To taste
7. Green Chillies - 2 to 3 (very finely chopped)
8. Oil - For deep frying
9. Cooking soda - 1/4 tsp (Optional)
10. Onion - 1 small (finely chopped..optional as the traditional medu vada procedure doesnot contain onion)

Procedure:

1. Soak urad dal for 4 to 6 hrs or overnight.

2. Then grind coarsely. 

3. Do not add much water, add just to form a thick paste. 
4. Heat oil for deep frying in a kadai.
5. Meanwhile mix all the above ingredients in the batter except oil :).

6. The only spices used are pepper and cumin seeds.

7. Wet your hand everytime before dropping vadas so that you can easily drop vadas into oil.
8. Now take small lemon-sized batter, flatten and press with your thumb in its middle so that to make a hole. 

9. Now carefully drop this dumpling in hot oil. Like wise drop 5 to 6 vadas per batch in the hot oil and fry well till the ssshhh sound subsides.

10. Likewise make all the vadas, enjoy hot vadas delicacy with peanut chutney or ginger chutney and sambar :).

Note:
1. Grind only before making vadas. So that the batter will be fresh and perfectly moist. 
2. Perfect batter consistency can be checked as, after grinding take a bowl of water and drop some batter by making it in the shape of a ball in the water. If the batter ball floats on the water then its perfect consistency. Else if it sinks down or if the batter ball splits and batter flows on the water then its said to be wrong consistency. Which indicates batter consists lot of water and with such batter we cannot make proper vadas.
3. Beating the batter for almost 4 to 5 minutes before making each batch of vadas helps in getting soft and fluffy vadas.
4. Wet hands for each dumpling.
5. Frying in a medium or preferrably low flame helps vadas evenly cooked in the middle also it takes a bit longer time to get the brown colour.
6. Flattening vada batter using hands is preferred than using any plastic cover. Using cover flattens the vadas after frying unlike using hands with which we can get fluffy vadas.