Medu Vada / Garelu / Vadai /How to make medu vada step by step

Medu Vada is a traditional favourite dish of south india .No festive meal or special occasion meal is complete without this classic dish ‘Garelu’ or ‘Medu Vada’ in most of the South Indian homes.
If you are making it for any festival, Make few without onions to offer God. Then add onion to remaining batter.It is my daughter's one of the favorite dish.

Recipe type: Breakfast, snacks ,Festivals
Serves: 15-16 Medium sized medu vadas

Ingredients :-

Urad dal/split black gram /Ulutham paruppu /Minappapu - 2 cups 
Big onion – 1 (Finely chopped) 
Green chillies - 5 (chopped) . 
Ginger / Adrak - 1 inch piece (finely chopped)
Curry leaves - 2 sprig (chopped)
Peppercorns /Kalimirch /Mirayalu -6 to 8 (whole /crushed)
Salt to taste 
Water As needed 
Oil for deep frying  

Method:-

1) Clean, wash and soak the urad dal for 5 hours or overnight. 

 

2) Strain the water from the dal.Add chopped chillies,ginger,pepper,curry leaves and grind in a mixer to a smooth batter sprinkling very little water if required. 
3) Don’t grind all the dal at once, use small portions to grind batch wise as its easier to grind into a soft batter.
4) Add salt while grinding to make a fluffy batter.
5) The batter should be fluffy, thick and not liquidy.To see the right consistency of batter is to add a few drops of batter in a bowl of water. If the batter drops  floats and do not get dissolved, then that's the right consistency of batter.
6) Then add finely chopped onions to the batter and mix well and keep aside .
7) Heat enough oil in kadai /deep frying pan.

8) Take a bowl of water. Wet your hands with water and take lemon sized ball and flatten it into a vada on a banana leaf or zip loc bag or thick plastic cover.
Make a hole in the center of the vada so that it cooks evenly all over.
OR
 Take some batter in your right hand from the bowl. give it a round shape. With your thumb make a hole in the center.

9) Slowly drop it into the hot oil carefully and deep fry it on both sides on medium heat to a golden brown colour.

 10)Remove with a slotted spoon and Drain on absorbent paper or kitchen tissues to remove excess oil.
 11) Repeat with the remaining batter to make more medu vadas.

Vadas without onion

Vadas After adding onion

12) Serve hot hot Vadas with Coconut Chutney or Sambar

Tips:- 

1) If your vadas soaks lot of oil ,then it means you have added more water,reduce next time. 
2) Try adding any one of the following -
one tsp of rice flour or gram flour to reduce vada drinking lot of  oil
3)If you could not shape the vadas  due to batter becoming sticky because of grinding for too long then keep the batter in refrigerator and try after two hours.