Medu Vada - cooking recipe

Ingredients

1 cup split washed Urad Dal
1 pinch hing
1 tablespoon green chili pepper, chopped
1 chopped onion
2 tablespoons cilantro, chopped
1 teaspoon salt
oil, to fry

Preparation

Wash and soak dal in about 3 cups of water for about 4-6 hours.
Drain the water and grind dal to smooth paste. Take dal batter out in a wide bowl.
Add all the ingredients to the dal batter, cilantro, green chili, coriander,hing,onion salt, 1 tbsp oil beat ,the batter for 2-3 minutes this will make the batter light and fluffy.
Keeping the right consistency of batter is very important. When you put the batter on your palm batter should hold its shape. Make the Vadas batter when you are ready to fry them.
Heat the oil in a frying pan over medium high heat.
The frying pan should have about 1 inch of oil. To check if the oil is ready, put one drop of batter in oil. The batter should sizzle and come up but not change color right away. If oil is very hot Vadas will not cook through and will not be crispy.
Wet the palms and take golf size batter and place over your palm, flatten to round shape and make hole in the center with other hand wet fingers slowly slide Vada into the hot oil.
Fry the Vadas from both sides to golden brown. Take them out over paper towel to drain access oil.
Serve Medu Vada served with coconut chutney or Tomato ketchup.