Adai
The Tamil mixed-dal dosa — rice and three dals ground coarse, no fermenting, griddled thick with onion and curry leaves.
Drafted — not yet cooked in our kitchen
- Hands on
- 12 min
- Total
- 3 hr 32 min
- Serves
- 4
- Difficulty
- medium
Three dals and rice, soaked for an afternoon and ground rough. Nothing ferments, so this is the dosa you can decide on the same day.
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Ingredients
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Method
Rinse the rice and the three dals together until the water runs clear, then cover them with plenty of water, drop in the dried chillies, and leave them. No fermenting follows, so this soak is the only thing softening the grain.
Look for: A chana dal — the toughest of the three — crushes between a thumbnail and a fingertip with no hard core, and a rice grain breaks in half cleanly rather than shattering.
180–240 min · bowl
Drain and grind everything with the asafoetida, salt and as little water as the mixer will tolerate. Stop while it is still gritty. Adai is meant to be coarse — a smooth batter gives you a limp dosa instead.
Look for: Rubbed between two fingers it should feel like fine rava, not like cream. It should drop off a ladle in a heavy lump rather than pouring in a stream.
4–6 min · mixer-grinder
Cover and leave the batter on the counter. This is not fermentation — it just lets the ground dal take up water and stop the batter thinning out later.
Look for: Slightly thicker than when you ground it, and no water separating on the surface.
20–30 min · bowl
Stir in the onion, curry leaves, ginger and coriander. Add these now rather than before the rest — onion sitting in salted batter leaks water into it.
Look for: Onion evenly through the batter, which should still be thick enough to mound on the ladle.
2–3 min · bowl
Heat the tawa over medium heat. Pour a ladle of batter and spread it out thick — much thicker than a dosa — then make a hole in the centre with the back of the ladle and pour oil into the hole and around the edge. The hole lets the middle cook instead of staying raw.
Look for: The edges lift away from the tawa on their own and the underside is deep brown in patches, not evenly pale. The top surface should have lost its wet shine before you turn it.
3–5 min · medium heat · tawa
Flip and cook the second side. Press it down once with the spatula so it makes contact all over.
Look for: Brown, firm, and stiff enough that it does not sag when you lift it from the middle with the spatula.
2–3 min · medium heat · tawa
Serve hot with avial, or with jaggery and butter, or plain curd. The batter keeps three days in the fridge — leave the onion out of the portion you are storing and stir it in fresh each morning.
1–2 min
About this dish
Adai is the everyday Tamil answer to wanting a dosa without the two-day wait — no fermenting, a soak of a few hours, and a coarse grind that is a feature rather than a shortcut. The proportion of dals shifts household to household; chana dal is usually the largest share of the three because it is what gives adai its bite. The classic pairing is avial, and a spoon of jaggery with butter is the standard thing given to children alongside it.