Bonda Soup
A besan bonda dropped into a thin peppery dal broth — the darshini order where half the point is eating it before the crust goes.
Drafted — not yet cooked in our kitchen
- Hands on
- 10 min
- Total
- 31 min
- Serves
- 4
- Difficulty
- medium
Two things made separately and put together at the last possible moment. Get the soup thin and properly peppery, fry the bonda on medium so the middle cooks, and combine them in front of whoever is eating.
Assembled in the kitchen and carried out, it is a different and worse dish.
Step by step, with timers and flame levels. Your screen stays awake.
Ingredients
Tap what you already have.
Method
Pressure cook the toor dal with the turmeric and plenty of water until it collapses. This soup is thin, so err towards more water rather than less.
Look for: The dal has lost its shape entirely and whisks into the water without lumps. Around three to four whistles on medium, but go by the dal.
12–18 min · medium heat · pressure cooker
Coarsely crush the peppercorns and cumin together — a mortar, or the flat of a heavy knife. Powder-fine and the soup turns muddy and bitter; whole and it tastes of nothing until you bite one.
Look for: Broken into visible pieces, with a strong pepper smell coming off the mortar.
1–2 min
Whisk the cooked dal smooth, add another 400 ml of water, the crushed pepper and cumin, ginger, curry leaves, asafoetida and salt. Simmer gently — a hard boil turns it cloudy and dulls the pepper.
Look for: Thin enough to drink from the bowl — closer to a rasam than a dal. It should coat a spoon barely at all, and the pepper should hit the back of the throat a second after you taste it.
8–12 min · low heat · saucepan
Finish the soup with ghee and coriander, then keep it on the lowest heat. It has to be properly hot when the bonda goes in, and reheating it later flattens the pepper.
Look for: Steaming, with the ghee sitting in small clear pools on the surface.
1–2 min · low heat · saucepan
Now the bonda. Mix the besan, rice flour, onion, green chilli, ginger, coriander, curry leaves, salt and the pinch of soda, then add water a little at a time. The batter goes in thick — this is a dropped fritter, not a dipped one.
Look for: Thick enough that a spoonful holds together as a lump and drops off the spoon reluctantly. If it pours, it will spread in the oil into a flat fritter instead of a ball.
4–6 min · bowl
Heat the oil on medium-high until a drop of batter surfaces in two or three seconds, then drop to medium. Slide in rounds of batter off a spoon and fry, turning them so they colour evenly.
Look for: Deep gold and hard-sounding when tapped with the slotted spoon, with the bubbling almost stopped. Hot oil and a fast fry leaves the middle raw — this wants medium and patience.
5–8 min · medium heat · kadai
Put one hot bonda in each bowl and ladle the hot soup around it at the table, not in the kitchen. Squeeze over the lemon. Eat it now — the crust has about a minute, and the rest of the pleasure is the bonda going soft in the soup as you work through the bowl.
About this dish
Bonda soup is a darshini and Udupi-hotel item rather than a household one, and it is not really a soup in the sense of a course — it is a snack served wet, ordered at four in the afternoon. The soup is close to a thin rasam without the tamarind, and it exists to be drunk from the bowl once the bonda is gone. Some counters use a plain besan bonda as here; others use a maida-and-curd mysore bonda, which is softer and goes to mush faster.