Vada Pav

A spicy potato slider. Vegan. delicious.

If I were to start writing stories about this dish, it would end up being a chronicle of my entire teenage life! Vada pav constituted the majority of my weekly expense in school and college. Most good stories and memories from India, somehow involve Vada pav 🙂

Its one of the most popular street food quick bites from Mumbai. People eat Vada pav for breakfast, lunch, dinner and anything in between. Its convenient, affordable, filling and an extremely delicious meal in itself! It’s not wrong in saying “Mumbai runs on Vada Pav”!

A few years ago, I made Vada Pav and Kanda Bhaji at my friend (and the best chef I know) Josh’s food truck/ Restaurant The Beacon Bite . It was an amazing experience for me and Vada Pav was a big hit! Josh went on to make a version of the vada Pav – a special on his menu 🙂 Here are a few pictures from that beautiful day in Beacon, NY in his Food Truck

You will need:

For the vada filling:

• 2 tbsp oil
• 6-10 cloves of Garlic, depending on size, I basically used one whole bunch of a small garlic
• 1.5″ piece of Ginger
• 6 to 7 Green Chillies(or more)
• 1 tsp Mustard seeds
• Pinch of Hing
• 7 to 8 Curry Leaves
• 1/2 tsp Turmeric powder
• 3-5 boiled Potatoes – depending on size again. I used 5 medium-small potatoes
• 1/2 cup chopped Coriander leaves

For the batter:

• 1 cup Besan
• 3 tbsp Rice Flour
• 1 tsp Chilli powder
• 1/2 tsp Turmeric powder
• Pich of hing (asafetida)
• Pinch of Baking Soda

For the dry Red Chutney:

• 1/2 cup of raw peanuts
• 5-6 cloves of garlic
• 1-2 tbsp red chilli powder
• 1 tbsp kanda-lasun masala – optional

Procedure:

Make the filling:

• Boil and Peel the potatoes. Cut in cubes and coarsely mash while still warm.

• Chop the garlic, ginger and green chillies and grind together in a mortar and pestle. Has to be fresh ginger, garlic and chillies.

• Heat the oil, add mustard seeds – let cracle. Next add the hing, turmeric, curry leaves and coarsely ground ginger-garlic-chillies. Sauté for just a few seconds. If overdone, the taste profile will change. Dont let it brown.

• Add the mashed potatoes and mix well. cover and cook for a couple minutes. turn off the heat.
• Add salt, a little spoon of sugar and coriander leaves and mix well. My Aji always used to say add a pinch of salt in sweet dishes and a pinch of sugar in savory ones! It just brings a depth of flavor to the dish.

• Divide the mixture into palm sized balls and shape like flat round cutlets. With this quantity of mixture, I made 14 vadas.

Make the batter for coating the vadas:

• Take the chickpea flour and rice flour in a separate mixing bowl. Add turmeric powder, chilli powder, baking soda, salt to taste and mix well.
• Add water and using a whisk mix it in to a batter (pancake batter consistency) – check picture.

• Keep whisking for a few minutes to make it fluffy, which will help create a light and crispy coating on the vadas.

Frying the Vadas:

• Test the oil by dropping a drop of batter before you start frying the vadas to make sure its hot enough. Save the bits of batter – you can use it for the dry spicy chutney that goes with vada pav
• Dip the potato mixture cutlets into the chickpea flour batter and fly on medium-high flame till golden on the outside

• Take the vadas out on a dish lined with paper towels

For the fried green chillies:

• Take a few chillies and slmake small slits in them.
• Place the chillies on the stariner and drop in the oil – stand away from the stove!

• Once the crackling stops in a few seconds, remove the chillies in a dish and season generously with salt

The dry Chutney:

• You can take advantage of the hot oil and fry a few more ingredients while your vadas cool down to edible temperatures and make the delicious spicy dry chutney to go with it.
• Drizzle any leftover batter in the hot oil and fry umps of batter till golden and transfer to a plate
• Fry 1/2 a cup of peanuts till golden brown and remove in a plate
• Fry 4-5 large cloves of garlic (skin on) – till golden brown and remove on a plate

• Let the fried batter, peanuts and garlic cool down – then grind it to a powder along with a couple tablespoons of red chilli powder and some salt. You can also add a tbsp of kanda-lasun masala if you have it.

The Pav:

• Probably as important as the vada itself in a vada pav
• You want that golden, pillow-y soft, melt-in-the-mouth Indian PAV. You really can’t get the same effect with any other bread roll.
• So if you are already thinking of making the perfect Vadas, make the pav as well you wont regret it! Here’s the recipe for Pav.

Assemble the vada pav:

Slit the pav, add the dry chutney, place the vada in it and serve with a fried green chilli on the side.

A Few tips:

• The potatoes: choose golden skinned potatoes. Avoid powdery, gooey or sweet (worst) potatoes. Potatoes have to be freshly boiled and mashed. Leftover mashed potatoes that have been sitting in the fridge won’t give you the same result.
• The pav: This is hard to find outside India. I strongly recommend making your own, because its such an integral part of the whole experience. Here’s the recipe.
• The chutneys:
  • Although the dry chutney I talk about it the most authentic one thats served with a typical vada pav.
  • You can also eat the vada pav with tamarind chutney, Garlic chutney, green chutney one or all of them.
  • No matter what chutney you choose, you absolutely should not miss is the fried green chillies