JOIN USDosa delight!
Dosa — crispy or soft, golden brown or yellow, for breakfast or dinner, is a staple South Indian dish that has found favour with one an all. However, making dosas can be quite tricky, unless you know the right method. Here are a few tips to make your dosas turn out the way you want:
• To begin with, the batter should be right. Though you can buy the batter off the shelf nowadays, why not make it at home for that feel-good factor? Soak four parts of rice and one part of urad dal for six hours, grind it, and allow it to ferment for almost eight hours. If you like soft dosas, add one part of poha while grinding the batter. If golden brown is your favoured dosa colour, then soak a few grains of channa dal along with the rice and urad dal mixture.
• The quantity of water added to the batter depends on the kind of dosa you want. For thin & crisp dosas, the batter should be watery; for soft and fluffy dosas, the batter should be thick.
• For dosas to turn out right, the tava should be properly heated — neither too hot, nor too mild. To check if the tava is dosa-ready, sprinkle a few drops of water on it — if the water sizzles, then the tava is dosa-ready.
• Take the required amount of batter in a ladle and pour it in the centre of the tava, slowly spreading it outwardly; add a few drops of oil at the edges of the dosa to make it crisp.
• If dosas don’t come off easily from the tava, take a slice of onion, dip it in a few drops of oil, and run it across the tava.
• For thick and fluffy dosas, pour the batter on the tava and cover it with a lid — you will now have dosas that are crispy on the outside while soft and fluffy on the inside.
• If the batter is over a week old and has turned slightly sour, then you can make varieties of items from it: rava dosa, onion dosa, ragi dosa, paddu…For rava dosa, add a few spoons of chiroti rava, a little maida, water for the right consistency, and salt to taste.
• For onion dosa, add a few spoons of chiroti rava, chopped onions, grated carrot and coconut, finely chopped green chillies and coriander, water for the right consistency, and salt to taste. This same batter can be used to make paddu, too. Masala dosa is quite easy, too. Make the dosa batter with rice, urad dal and channa dal, prepare the filling with boiled potato, pour the batter really thin on the tava, add a generous amount of oil, ghee or butter, spread a layer of any chutney or chutney powder, and the filling, and fold it once it’s crispy on the sides.
Now, whoever said dosa-making was tricky?