Vada pav is not just food it’s an emotion! It bring backs all my memories of vibrant Mumbai city which was my home for 7 years before coming to Bangkok.

It’s a staple street food for lots of Mumbaikars from ages now. It’s simply a potato fritter closed in bread roll served with mint chutney and sweet chutney.

To simplify the process, we can break it down in few steps: step 1 is to make potatoes masala for making vada ( potato fritters). Second step would be making besan ( gram flour) batter and make vadas. Step 3 and step 4 would be making green chutney and sweet chutney respectively. Step 5 is just putting all this together.

I’ll be covering step 1 and 2 here. For recipes of green chutney and sweet chutney, click on respective links.

RECIPE:

INGREDIENTS:

• POTATO MASALA FILLING:
  • Potatoes: 500gms
  • Onions (finely chopped): 1
  • Green chilli (finely chopped): 3
  • Mustard seeds: 1tsp
  • Cumin seeds: 1tsp
  • Curry leaves: 4-5
  • Asefoetida: a pinch
  • Salt, red chili powder: to taste turmeric powder: a pinch
  • Amchur powder: 1tsp
• BESAN BATTER:
  • Besan (gram flour): 2 cups
  • Salt: 1/2 tsp
  • Baking soda: a pinch
• Oil: for frying

METHOD:

• Wash the potatoes, cut in half and put them to boil. You can use pressure cooker or boil them pan.
• Once boiled completely, let them cool and then peel them off.
• Mash boiled potatoes, add salt, red chilli powder, turmeric powder and amchur powder and mix well.
• In a pan, heat 1 tbsp oil. When oil is heated add mustard seeds, cumin seed and let crackle. Add curry leaves and asefoetida and let it cook for a minute.
• Add chopped chilli and onions and sautè for a minute or 2 till onions are cooked and soft. No need to brown the onions.
• Now add boiled potatoes and mix well.
• Take off the flame and let cool. This the potato masala filling for vadas.
• Put rest of the oil (for frying) in a bigger and deep pan.
• While oil gets heated up, we will make besan batter. Take besan in a bowl add salt and soda in it and mix well.
• Add water as needed and mix well to make sure there are no lumps.
• Usually for 2 cup besan, approx 1 to 1.5 cup water is enough. If besan you’re using needs more than that, add a little a time.
• Make sure the batter is thick and consistent not watery else vada will have very thin coat on it which is not desirable.
• Once the batter is made keep it aside for 5 mins.
• During that time you can prep your potato filling.
• Take the fillings and make small round balls from it.
• Once oil is heated well, take filling balls and dip it in batter making sure batter is coating it uniformly and put it in oil to fry.
• Don’t put lots of vadas in pan together to fry else they might break while handling. Fit just enough vadas in oil depending on the size of your pan.
• Once its uniformly fried and reached nice brown color, take out on kitchen tissue.
• Vadas are ready!
• Take a dinner rolls/ bread roll, apply mint chutney, sweet chutney put a vada in it and voila! Vada pav is ready!!
• Serve with fried chilli!