What You Are Making
Listen first. A ladle of batter lands on a hot iron griddle with a soft hiss, a flat ladle scrapes it outward in a wide circle, and within a minute the edges turn gold and curl while a sour, toasty smell fills the room. Masala dosa is two pieces of cooking in one. One is a fermented batter, spread thin and crisped on the pan. The other is a soft, gently spiced potato mixture that waits inside. Neither is hard by itself. The batter needs a day of planning, because it must soak, be ground and then ferment before it behaves on the pan, and spreading it thin takes a few attempts. The potato, on the other hand, is done in about a quarter of an hour and tolerates small slips.
The potato is what makes a dosa masala. Without it you have a plain dosa, or sada dosa. The word masala points to the mild blend of turmeric and mustard seed in the filling, not to chilli. A properly made filling is soft and warm, not fiery, which explains why this is an ordinary breakfast and not a dish kept for guests.
The Dish’s Backstory
Dosa itself is ancient and belongs to the whole of South India, and written mentions of fermented rice and lentil pancakes go back many centuries there. The particular version called masala dosa, a dosa rolled over a turmeric-spiced potato mixture, is linked most firmly with Udupi in coastal Karnataka. Restaurants in the Udupi style took it through the south and later across the country, from the end of the nineteenth century into the early twentieth. Tamil Nadu has an old and equally valid dosa tradition of its own, with different habits about batter proportions and thickness, so neither state can fairly be named the dosa's inventor. What the Udupi hotels can be credited with is the standard restaurant form of the dish: large, thin, folded into a cone or half-moon, and sent out with coconut chutney and sambar. South Indian food writing treats those hotels as the force that turned a home batter into a dish known everywhere.
At the Stove, Step by Step
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Prep
Soak the rice and dal apart
Wash the rice and the urad dal in two separate bowls until the rinsing water is nearly clear, and cover both with plenty of fresh water. The fenugreek goes in with the dal. Leave them for 4 to 6 hours, or overnight in a cool kitchen. Dal softens sooner than rice, and that is the reason the two are ground apart.
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Prep
Grind to a thick, smooth batter
Drain and grind the dal first, along with the poha if you are using it, pouring in a little water at a time until it becomes pale, thick and airy. Expect this to take longer than seems reasonable, around 15 to 20 minutes in a wet grinder. Grind the rice on its own to a slightly coarser, sandy paste. Put both in one large container, add the salt and mix with your hand, which also folds air into the batter.
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Prep
Ferment until it has clearly risen
Cover loosely and put the container somewhere warm for 8 to 12 hours, or longer if the weather is cold. You will know it is ready when the volume has roughly doubled, small bubbles show throughout, and the smell is pleasantly sour rather than sharp or boozy. Do not hurry it with extra heat or skip it. This stage gives the dosa its tang and its ability to crisp.
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Prep
Prepare the tempered potato
Warm the oil in a wide pan and drop in the mustard seeds. When they crackle, add chana dal, urad dal, curry leaves and dried red chilli, and fry them briefly until the dals are light gold. Add the sliced onion, green chillies and ginger, and cook around 5 minutes until the onion is soft and see-through.
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Cook
Fold in turmeric and potato
Add the turmeric, then the crushed potato and the water, and stir until you have a soft, bright yellow mass that clings together. If it looks dry, splash in a little more water. Salt it, simmer for 2 to 3 minutes while the flavours settle, then mix in the coriander, cover the pan and set it aside to stay warm.
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Cook
Heat and wipe the tawa
Heat a flat tawa over medium-high heat. A few flicked drops of water should hiss and vanish almost at once. Rub the surface with a little oil on a folded cloth or half an onion, which also helps the batter let go cleanly.
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Cook
Spread the batter in one smooth motion
Ladle batter onto the centre of the hot tawa and spiral it outward with the flat bottom of the ladle in one continuous motion, working fast before it sets. You want an even layer thinner than a pancake. Thickness decides whether the dosa crisps or stays soft and doughy.
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Cook
Drizzle oil and cook until the rim lifts
Dribble a little oil or ghee around the rim and across the top. Then leave it, over medium-high heat, for 2 to 3 minutes, until the underside is golden brown and the rim lifts and curls from the pan unaided. A dosa that is well fermented and well spread does not need turning.
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Serve
Fill, fold, and carry it straight out
Lay a band of warm potato along the middle or across one half, then fold the dosa over into a half-moon or roll it into a tube. Take it to the table at once with coconut chutney and sambar. A dosa starts to lose its crackle as soon as it sits on a plate, so this one does not wait.
Stand-ins If You Are Short
Idli rice, or any short-grain parboiled rice, is the right choice. Skip basmati and other long aromatic grains, which neither grind nor ferment the same way and give a gummy batter. If yours tastes thin, grinding in a handful of cooked rice or poha helps it crisp. Instant dosa mixes make a decent weeknight shortcut but lack the tang and texture of a properly fermented batter. Store-bought or frozen batter from South Indian grocers is widely used and acceptable when you would rather not grind.
Dial the Chilli Up or Down
Heat in the potato is slight and comes from the green and dried red chillies, both easy to scale. For a softer filling, drop the dried chilli and add just a sliver of green, trusting mustard seed, curry leaf and turmeric to carry the taste. For a hotter one, add another slit green chilli, or a pinch of chilli powder alongside the turmeric. Better still, put a sharper tomato or red chilli chutney on the side and keep the filling mild, since it is meant to be the calm element on the plate.
Where It Goes Wrong
A batter that has not fermented enough, often from a cold kitchen or an early start, tops the list. It gives a flat-tasting dosa that will not crisp, whatever the griddle temperature. The pan itself is the next suspect. If it is too cool, the batter will neither spread thin nor crisp. If it is too hot, the batter sets before the ladle can move, leaving something thick and torn. A heavy hand with oil in the filling pan produces a greasy potato instead of a seasoned one, and unsalted batter, left to the filling for all its seasoning, makes a bland crepe. Last, poking or turning the dosa early rips it, so wait for the rim to lift on its own.
Leftovers, Kept and Revived
Keeping: Fermented batter keeps 3 to 4 days in the refrigerator and goes on souring gently. It thickens in the cold, so stir it and loosen it with a splash of water before use. In portions it also freezes for up to a month. The cooked potato filling lasts 2 days in a sealed container in the fridge. Finished dosas do not keep and are always better made to order.
Reviving: Warm the potato in a pan over low heat with a little water to loosen it, or in short microwave bursts with a stir between each. A finished dosa will not return to crisp. Back on the pan it warms through but stays soft, with no crackle left, so cook only the number you will eat and keep the remaining batter for another day.
Handle This Part Carefully
Within the stated window, batter can ferment safely at room temperature, since its acidity rises faster than spoilage organisms can multiply. After that, refrigerate it instead of leaving it out for good, particularly in hot weather, when it can overferment, turn harshly sour and eventually become unsafe. The potatoes for the filling should be cooled and chilled soon after boiling if they will not be used right away, because boiled potato left warm for long is a known setting for bacteria. Nothing in this recipe is deep-fried, so the one oil rule is to avoid letting the tawa oil smoke and blacken over many rounds; wipe away burnt residue between dosas.
Worth Opening Next
- K.T. Achaya, "Indian Food: A Historical Companion" (Oxford University Press) — on the history of fermented rice-and-lentil batter dishes in South India.
- Colleen Taylor Sen, "Feasts and Fasts: A History of Food in India" (Reaktion Books) — on the Udupi hotel tradition and its role in standardising and spreading masala dosa.