Vada Pav | How to make Vada Pav

Posted on Oct 27th, 2017

by Sowmya Venkatachalam

Categories:

5 from 1 vote

Vada Pav, Classic Mumbai style street food. Deep fried gram flour coated mashed potato balls sandwiched between pav bread. A perfect evening snack with hot tea/coffee!

Prep Time 15

Cook Time 1 30

Total Time 1 45

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Reading Time: 7 minutes

Vada Pav, Classic Mumbai style street food. Deep fried gram flour coated mashed potato balls sandwiched between pav bread. Batata vada also known as Aloo Bonda but it has slight variation of how we prepare aloo bonda in South Indian Style. We make aloo bonda by adding just red chilli powder. But here the main secret ingredient is Garlic-Ginger-Green Chillies. These ” 3G’s” make this dish extremely tasty and unique than our conventional SouthIndian style Aloo Bonda. This Batata Vada is stuffed inside the Pav Buns which is also called as “Laddi Pav”. The Dry Garlic chutney is enhances the flavor of the whole dish. A perfect evening snack!

Vada pav is little complicated or rather time consuming snack. Instead of making vada pav we can just make batata vada and serve as an evening snack!

Tips for making Vada Pav:

Make sure the batata vada batter is not very runny or not very thick. If the batter is very thick, the vada outer cover will be thick and hard. If the batter is very thin, the potato dumplings will not be coated properly.
Add the baking soda only when you are ready to deep fry the vada. After adding baking soda do not keep the batter for a long time.
While frying vada in oil, make sure the flame is low to medium. This ensures the vada gets evenly deep fried.
While making garlic chutney, if you have roasted peanuts, you can use it directly without roasting again.
Do not add water while grinding garlic chutney.
Serve the vada pav with chutney, masala, onions and green chillies.

Recipe Card to make Vada Pav

INSTRUCTIONS WITH STEP BY STEP PICTURES:

MAKING BATATA VADA

First lets start with the filling of the vada. Take the green chillies, ginger and garlic cloves in a mixer.

Grind it to a nice paste. This is the spice mix for our filling.

Heat oil in a pan, add mustard seeds. When the mustard seeds starts to sputter, add curry leaves and hing and fry for few seconds. Then add the ground ginger-garlic-green chilli paste and saute it for couple of minutes in medium flame.

I have already boiled the potatoes and mashed it coarsely and kept it aside. Add these coarsely mashed potatoes to the pan and mix well.

Then add turmeric powder, salt and mix well.

To the pan, then add finely chopped coriander leaves and mix everything well.

Our Potato filling is ready. Allow the filling to come to room temperature and make lemon sized balls out of the filling and set it aside.

Now, lets prepare out batter. In a mixing bowl, add besan flour, corn flour and turmeric powder and mix well. Then add red chilli powder and salt and mix well.

Then add water little by little and mix well and make it like a bajji batter. The batter should not be too thick or too thin. Heat oil in a pan. Just before you fry the dumplings, add a pinch of Bi Carbonate of Soda and a tablespoon of hot oil and mix everything well. Adding soda salt should be at last, just before frying the batata vada. If you plan to make these batata vada for guests, then prepare the dumplings and also the batter without adding soda salt and hot oil and keep it ready. When the guests arrive and they are ready to be treated, then heat the oil and add hot oil along with soda salt and mix the batter .

Add each dumplings to the vada batter and nicely coat then with the batter using a fork. Fork will help to have a nice coating than using our hand.

Then using the fork itself, gently drop each coated dumplings in the hot oil and fry them.

Flip the batata vada on other side and fry them in medium flame till they are crispy and turn golden brown outside. Remove the fried batata vada from oil and place them in paper towel to drain excess oil.

Yummy and Crispy Batata Vada is now ready!

MAKING DRY GARLIC CHUTNEY

Dry Roast Garlic Cloves till light golden brown. We just want to get rid of the raw smell of the garlic. Take these roasted garlic aside

In the same pan, dry roast the peanuts and take the peanuts aside.

Again add the dry coconut and roast them till golden brown.

Take all these in a mixer jar and add red chili powder and salt and grind it to a dry powder without adding any water.

Dry Garlic Chutney Ready!

PREPARING VADA PAV

Take the Pav and slit it in half. Apply Green chutney on both the half of the bun. Also apply sweet tamarind chutney on the bun. These chutneys are optional.

Add Dry Garlic Chutney to the bun. Keep a batata vada and gently press it. Close the bun with other half. Take this in a serving plate. Serve the Vada Pav with Roasted Green chili & Fresh Onions.