Ingredients

Method 1

1. Raw rice - 1 cup
2. Poha – 1 cup
3. Urad dal (black gram) - 1/2 cup
4. Fenugreek seeds/methi seeds - 1 tsp
5. Water - 2 cups or more (as per requirement)
6. Salt - as per taste

Method 2

1. Idli rice – 3 cups
2. Poha – 1 cup
3. Urad dal – 1 cup
4. Methi seeds/fenugreek seeds – 1 tsp
5. Salt - as per taste
6. Water – 2 1/2 cup or more (as per requirement)

Method

Soaking rice and urad dal

1. Wash rice, poha and urad dal (whole white urad dal) well.
2. Soak rice and methi seeds for 6 hours. Soak urad dal separately for more than 2 hrs. Some soak for 1 1/2 hrs only or both can be soaked together in water for whole night.
3. You can soak poha/aval just for 1hr or can soak with the rice itself.

Grinding and fermentation

4. If you are grinding in a mixer, grind urad dal and rice separately
5. In a wet grinder, for small portions, add urad dal and rice together and grind. But add urad dal first, grind for 2 to 3 minutes, and then add other ingredients.
6. Drain water from the soaked urad dal and grind it to a fluffy smooth batter. Add 1 to 1 1/2 cup of water or as required, remove and pour it in a separate bowl.
7. Now add the rice and poha together and grind to a batter consistency with 1 cup water or as required. In the end when the rice mixture is ground to a smooth batter, add the ground urad dal mixture in the rice batter and let it grind for 5 minutes by adding salt as required, until both the batter is well blended.
8. Pour in separate bowls or airtight containers, cover and let it ferment overnight or for approx 10 hrs or more. The batter after fermentation will be doubled.
9. Refer to my dosa batter recipe for more tips on grinding and fermentation.

Cooking set dosa

10. Heat a flat non-stick griddle/tawa or dosa pan/tawa.
11. Wipe with a slice of onion on dosa pan by just putting few drops of water on tawa and few drops of oil also, it will sizzle. To avoid burning your hand while wiping with onion, pierce the onion with fork or knife and then wipe it on tava. You can also refer to my dosa recipe for more elaborate instructions.
12. Now pour 1 big laddle of batter on the hot tawa.
13. Spread slowly like a thick pancake , with the ladle, do not spread much as it has to be small and thick . You can see small pores on the dosa forming.
14. Let it cook on medium heat then drizzle some oil on the sides and on the dosa, let it cook for around for more than 1minute.(you can also cover it with a lid).
15. You can see from top that dosa is cooked and then turn the side and cook it just for a ½ minute or until golden colour comes, no need to cook further.
16. Prepare 3 to 4 dosas and serve as set dosa with tomato chutney or any chutney you like.

Notes

1. The batter should not be too thick or too thin. The texture of the batter should be like thin condensed milk or custard.
2. The dosa batter should be slightly thinner than idli batter.
3. You can use the same water in which the urad dal/rice was soaked for grinding.