Batata Vada
The Mumbai potato vada — a mustard, hing and ginger-garlic potato filling in a thin besan coat, fried till the shell sets.
Drafted — not yet cooked in our kitchen
- Hands on
- 22 min
- Total
- 44 min
- Serves
- 4
- Difficulty
- medium
A batata vada is two jobs. The filling is a potato mash with a full tempering folded through it; the coat is a thin besan batter that has to set fast enough to seal before the potato inside starts steaming its way out. Keep the mash slightly lumpy, get the batter to ribbon off the spoon, and the rest is heat management.
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Ingredients
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Method
Pressure cook the potatoes whole and unpeeled with water to just cover — around 12 to 16 minutes at pressure. Take the cooker off the heat and let the pressure drop on its own; forcing it makes the potato waterlogged. Most of the window on this step is that wait, not the cooking.
Look for: A knife slides into the middle of the largest potato and out again with no drag. If it grips even slightly, it needs longer.
22–30 min · medium-high heat · pressure cooker
Peel the potatoes while still warm and crush them by hand or with a masher. Leave a few lumps. A smooth purée turns gluey and the vada goes dense.
Look for: Mostly broken down, with pea-sized pieces still visible through the mash.
· bowl
Grind the ginger, garlic and green chilli to a coarse paste with no water. A stone mortar or a small mixer jar both suit this quantity.
Look for: Pasty but still grainy — you should be able to see flecks of chilli skin.
1–2 min · mixer-grinder
Heat the oil in a kadai. Add the mustard seeds and wait for them to pop before anything else goes in, then the asafoetida and curry leaves, then the ginger-garlic-chilli paste. Turmeric goes in last, off the direct blast, because it scorches bitter in seconds.
Look for: Mustard has stopped popping, curry leaves have gone stiff and glassy, and the raw sharpness of the garlic has given way to a rounder smell.
2–3 min · medium heat · kadai
Tip the crushed potato into the tempering with the salt, lemon juice and coriander and fold it through on a low flame for a minute — fold rather than stir, you want it coated, not beaten. Then take it off the heat and leave it until it is cool enough to handle before rolling into 12 balls, each flattened slightly. The cooling is most of this step.
Look for: The mix holds when squeezed in a fist and does not crumble at the edges. If it does, it is too dry — a teaspoon of water fixes it.
12–18 min · low heat · kadai
Whisk the besan, rice flour, turmeric, chilli powder, hing and salt with the water, adding the water in two or three goes rather than all at once. Whisk hard at the end: a lump is a patch of potato the batter never covers.
Look for: Thick enough to coat the back of a spoon and fall off it in a ribbon, not a drip. Too thin and it slides off the potato in the oil.
3–4 min · bowl
Heat oil for deep frying in a kadai and test it with a bead of batter before the first vada goes in. Dip each potato ball, turn it over in the batter, and lower it into the oil — six at most, or the oil temperature falls and they soak. Turn once the underside sets. Twelve vada is two batches; let the oil come back up to heat between them.
Look for: The test bead should sink then rise within a couple of seconds — if it browns instantly the oil is too hot. A finished vada stops fizzing loudly and the shell sounds hard when tapped with the slotted spoon.
4–6 min · medium heat · kadai
Lift onto a rack or paper and eat hot, with dry garlic chutney or green chutney — or split a pav, spread both sides and put a vada in it.
About this dish
Batata vada is the potato ball inside a vada pav, and it is also eaten on its own with chutney at street stalls across Mumbai. The filling is a full tempering in its own right — mustard, hing, curry leaf, turmeric — which is what separates it from a plain mashed-potato fritter.