Thin Crispy Homemade Dosa Recipe

Last week I prepared a very popular and tasty Indian snack “Dosa“. Dosa is basically a south Indian snack but due to its taste and amazing texture, this dish has been liked all over the world by different types of people.

Famous Australian master chef Gary Mehigan, when visited India, stated Dosa as one of his favourite vegetarian dishes ever. He even cooked dosa giving his own twist to the authentic recipe of dosa. I followed his recipe and made dosa for four people.

So here is the recipe for dosa, follow it and make your own homemade crispy dosa with chutney and sambhar.

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The Great Indian Dosa

Dosa is a rice pancake which is served with vegetable curry or commonly called as sambhar and chutney. Dosa can be eaten both as a snack and main course. I made it for lunch and ate it till dinner.

There are FIVE steps for preparing the complete Dosa dish and three steps to eat it too. let’s start making our dosa.

Step1– Preparing the batter

For a crispy and tasty Dosa, we need to prepare the batter at least 24 hours before the main recipe. The main ingredients are rice and white split beans (urad daal).

Take rice and white beans in a 3:1 ratio. This means if you are taking one cup of white lentil then take three equal cups of rice.

Presoak both the things separately for at least 12 hours. After 12 hours grind them together in a mixer.

Add half a spoon of salt in the mix and a little water to reduce the thickness of the paste. Remember, the batter should be thin and consistent. So, just add enough water to reduce the density of the paste to make it a semi-liquid batter. For the above-mentioned ingredients, add a glass full of water, slowly while checking the consistency of the batter.

Step2- Preparing the filling for dosa

This filling goes inside the rice pancake of Dosa and is usually made of potatoes. So for this, you need:

4 potatoes (boiled and peeled generally non-starchy ones)
2 red onions (sliced in concave wedges)
Two spoons of soaked gram split beans (chana daal) soak at least for half an hour before cooking.
1 teaspoon of mustard seeds
Fresh curry leaves
Half teaspoon of turmeric powder
Half teaspoon of red chilli powder
Salt as per taste

Heat your kadhai putting 2 tablespoons of vegetable oil in it. Now add mustard seeds, curry leaves, onion slices, mashed potatoes, split beans and the spices just in the order as written. No need to overcook this filling just put the stove off after 3-4 minutes of cooking.

Step2– Preparing the Sambhar

For sambhar we need:

Half a cup of split pigeon peas (toor daal)
Vegetables (drumstick cut in 3-inch pieces, eggplant diced into 4 cm pieces, bottle gourd diced in 4 cm pieces)
Curry leaves- 6-7
M.D.H Sambhar masala (two and a half spoons)
Turmeric powder (one teaspoon)
half a teaspoon of fenugreek seeds
Tamarind paste (2 spoonfuls)
2 Dried red chillies
Coriander leaves (chopped)
A little bit of asafoetida (less than half spoon if original is used)
Refined oil – 2 tablespoons

Pressure cook pigeon peas along with a half teaspoon of turmeric, salt and water until the daal become soft.

Put on the flame and in a kadhai add tamarind paste, 2 cups of water, asafoetida, turmeric powder, sambhar powder and mix well.

Put in all the vegetables and let the water heat until it reduces to half of its original volume.

Now add the daal to boiling mixture and set it aside for slow cooking. Now for the Tadka heat a small pan and add two spoon oil, mustard seeds, fenugreek seeds, dry red chillies, curry leaves. Add the Tadka to the sambhar mixture and cover it with a lid.

Put the stove off as your sambhar is now ready. Garnish with coriander leaves.

Step3– Preparing the Chutney

Dosa is served along with peanut and coconut chutney.

I gave it a little twist by adding mint leaves and hung curd to the chutney.

For chutney you need:

100 gms of roasted peanuts
100 gms grated fresh coconut
4 tablespoons of hung curd
2 mint leaves (optional)
salt as per taste
Take all these things together and grind them well in a mixer to make the chutney.

Step4– Preparing the rice pancake

This is the final step and for this, you need a dosa pan. I suggest you to buy Prestige’s Dosa Tava for best crispy dosa.

Slice an onion horizontally and plug it with a fork, this will be used to apply a very little amount of oil on the tava.

Put the tava on high flame and put the batter on it as fast as u can in a circular motion. For pouring the batter use a flat surfaced ladle or a saucer so that u can even the batter well. Cook the thin pancake till it gets light brown in colour from one side. Similarly, make other dosa too.

Steps to serve the Dosa:

Serve your Dosa on a big platter so that it can accommodate all the dishes in just one space.
Take a small piece of Dosa, put the filling on top of it and dip it in the Sambhar and Chutney turns by turn to have that one delicious bite of crispy dosa.