Recipe for 4 Lentil Pancake – Paruppu Adai
Traditionally Adai (South Indian Lentil Pancake ) is made with a mixture of lentils in a certain proportion. This is my own version.
Sometimes, you have a little bit of all dals remaining in your pantry, then this is the best way to clean up all those bottles. You have soak the dals and then grind them to a fairly smooth paste.Â
Unlike a regular dosai, this batter requires no fermentation. You can immediately make the pancakes and serve with pickles / curds / jaggery. This is a highly nutritious food and packs a lot of protein with not much of fat. And you make it no-fat too if you are using a non-stick pan.
Paruppu Adai with Molagai Podi
Makes about 16 pancakes
4 Lentil Pancake ( Paruppu Adai )
Traditionally Adai (South Indian Lentil Pancake ) is made with a mixture of lentils in a certain proportion. This is my own version. Sometimes, you have a little bit of all dals remaining in your pantry, then this is the best way to clean up all those bottles. You have soak the dals and then grind
Ingredients
Method
- Soak the above dals for 6-8 hours / overnight. After soaking, wash thoroughly to remove any sliminess.
- Place the drained dals in a mixer (do it in 2 batches if mixer is small). Grind the dals with chillies, salt, curry leaves to a paste, maintaining some roughness for texture. Add a little water if grinding is tough. But take care not to make the batter watery.
- Add the asafoetida to the batter, the consistency of which should be slightly thicker than a dosa batter.
- Heat a greased non-stick pan, take a ladle full of batter and spread it circularly into a pancake. The pancake should be roughly 1/2 cm thick.
- Cook it for 30 seconds to a minute each side and let it turn golden brown. The time taken to cook / crispen will depend on the thickness of the pancake.
- Serve hot with Molagai Podi / Chutney for breakfast or as a tiffin. My favourite combination is Adai with Tomato Chutney.
Notes
Notes:
Adai is filling enough to have as a light dinner with a bowl of curd and a piece of jaggery.
In case you add a little too much water during the grinding process, thicken the batter using some Rava (suji / semolina). This will add to the consistency as well as give it a crisp texture.
Love the Disclaimer Nandita! 😉
Love your Adai recipe, Nandita. It comes at the right time for me, because my parents-in-law are to visit us this month, and they won’t have cereals and milk for breakfast. It will have to be cooked breakfast every day. And I always try to offer new/diferent dishes while they are with us. Silly of me, I know. But I quite funnily do take pride in these things, you know. I used to do it even when I was ultra-busy back in India. So, the point is that these pancakes will be tried out in my kitchen quite soon. 🙂
Looks delicious!!!
Meeta-So that’s all you saw in the post-HUH?? Hahaha-seriously, i think I’m going to use it as a footer for all postsVaishali-Same about my inlaws, they have ‘kanji’ back home in Chennai, but when they were here, I subjected them to ALL kinds of food 🙂 Just for a change, they feel good eating stuff different than what they eat at home all the time.Thanks Pushpa!
Hi Nandita,I love adai – it’s easy to make and unlike dosai here, which is a hit or a miss, adai usually turns out well for me. Instead of asafoetida, I sometimes add a small piece of cinnamon, a couple of cloves, a few cloves of garlic and a small piece of ginger when grinding the dals to give it a paruppu vadai-like flavor.
Yes Faffer, that can be done too! I just kept it simple here.
nandhitha,why no cocanut/yammy ADAIKKU thengaai vendaamaa?photo adai is your adai thaane?good good.
Hi Manu, Welcome to my blog-Well, probably it’s the kerala style adai that required coconut. I haven’t used it in my recipe and neither do see my mom/ grandmom using it. But I’m sure adding coconut will add a nice flavour to the adai.
Nandita:Thank you very much for taking the time to create and maintain this blog. I am a second gen TamBram living in America and it is so great to have recipes to the dishes my amma and pati made. They never use measuring cups/spoons, so your more “science” oriented recipes are very helpful. I’m pregnant and want to make sure I keep up with this stuff so the third generation knows its roots! Many thanks again.
Can you make the batter and keep it in the fridge for any amount of time?
Thanks Nandita, just getting on the diet. Great I have alternatives to the boring meats.