Plain Dosa

PLAIN DOSA RECIPE – HOW TO MAKE DOSA BATTER AT HOME STEP BY STEP

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Dosa is soul food for me. I often tell TH how I can make and eat dosa every day for a long time and still not be bored with it. It’s probably because we ate a lot of dosa growing up. Our family, or rather the Reddiar community in Kerala, always has homemade dosa batter in the fridge, ready to whip up fresh dosas on demand or for the unexpected guests whom we always insist stay for dinner. My mom has been using an industrial sized wet grinder for many years now and it’s run about twice a week to keep the idli/dosa batter supply ongoing and fresh. She makes idlis as soon as the batter ferments and then dilutes the batter further to make dosas for the next 3-4 days.

The batter we make is the same for idli and dosa and uses only whole skinned urad dal (ulutham paruppu or uzhunnu parippu) and idli rice or dobbi ari. Apart from salt, nothing else is added to this. The proportion of rice to dal remains almost constant in the batter, only altered if the dal is old or doesn’t seem to do its job properly. This variable is successfully eliminated in most cases by sourcing the rice and dal from trusted grocery stores only (my dad ran one for many years so we directly sourced the best quality stuff from dealers in Andhra and Tamil Nadu directly).

I don’t know why I never shared this plain dosa recipe before since it’s such a comfort food for us and a constant in our lives. So as I was saying, the idli-dosa batter is made about twice a week and idli is made immediately after the first round of fermenting. Nowadays, amma makes idlis in bulk and stores them but back in the day, idlis only made an appearance the day after the batter was ground. From day two onwards, it was dosa time – soft, fluffy and slight thick for the adults, roasted and crisp for the kids and young at heart (my grand mom loved her dosas crisp).

As soon as I got settled in Singapore, I brought back a wet grinder from India – the Ultra tabletop one. It does a great job of grinding my batter and I have rarely bought batter from stores after buying it. It does take some planning to make your own dosa or idli batter at home but obviously is well worth the effort. You can check my detailed post on making idli batter at home for more info on that. Today we are going to look at how to prepare plain dosa recipe at home. This is not a paper roast dosa or an uthappam, but somewhere in the middle, perfect for everyday breakfast or dinner with some dosa podi. I will share the method to prepare crispy hotel-style dosa soon.

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INGREDIENTS

For the dosa batter

• 1 cup whole skinned urad dal
• 3 cups idli rice*
• Salt as needed (see notes)

To make dosas

• 4 cups of fermented dosa batter
• 1-1.5 cups of water
• 4 tbsp of gingelly oil (Indian sesame oil like Idhayam)
• 
  
• INSTRUCTIONS
  To Prepare Dosa Batter
  1. Soak the rice and dal separately for 3 hours
  2. Grind dal first into a smooth consistency adding enough water
  3. Grind rice into a smooth batter by adding just enough water to get it going
  4. Combine the two, add salt, and let it ferment in a large enough bowl lightly covered, for about 6-8 hours in a warm place
  5. * You can increase rice to four cups if using good quality urad dal but it takes experience and practice to tell if that's the case so go with these proportions as you start out
  To prepare the dosas
  1. Add enough water to the fermented batter until you have a smooth, pouring consistency. Make sure the batter is not too watery though, it should be thick-ish but fall off your spoon easily.
  2. Heat a tawa or iron griddle and grease with the oil lightly. Pour about ½ cup batter to the centre of the tawa.
  3. Using the back of your ladle, gently spread the batter with a circular motion from the centre towards the sides of the tawa.
  4. This requires some practice but is not hard at all. As you can see, I have made dosas enough times to actually do a decent job with my left hand while taking pictures with my right. Ok, I'll stop showing off now.
  5. Since we are not making very crispy dosas, don't spread it too thin. The dosa should be more or less evenly thick.
  6. Drizzle about 1 tsp of oil around the edges of the dosa and add a few sprinkles on the top as well.
  7. If your tawa is greased adequately and is not sticky, the edge of the dosa will start to come off the pan in about 1 minute or so. Use a spatula to gently lift the dosa
  8. and flip it over. Cook the other side for another 40 seconds or so and remove from pan.
  9. Serve with dosa podi, chutney, sambar, tiffin sambar, or anything that takes your fancy. I can eat dosa with pretty much anything!