Soft and Healthy Vegetable Dhokla
Instant Vegetable Dhokla Recipe
This recipe for soft and healthy vegetable dhokla would make a wonderfully nutritious breakfast treat. And if you’ve never made any dhokla recipe before, let me point out that instant vegetable dhokla recipe is a no-fail one. You can’t go wrong with it. Besides, it’s a healthy and tasty breakfast recipe that’s quick to make.
Also, for making these instant vegetable dhoklas, you can make your own combination of vegetables. I’m using onion, tomato, capsicum, carrot, and coriander, all finely chopped. But you could also use green beans, zucchini, and palak, and even lightly crushed green peas and sweet corn.
I’ll be using baking soda as a raising agent for making these healthy vegetable dhoklas, But you could use any fruit salt like ENO, instead.
Other interesting vegetarian breakfast recipes here include Potato and Cheese Croquettes, Sweet Corn Patties, and Gujarati / Kutchi Dabeli. Do check them out too.
Ingredients
¾ cup fine rava (semolina)
¾ cup besan (Bengal gram flour)
½ cup sour yogurt
2 tsp lime juice
2 tsp crushed ginger
1 ½ tsp crushed green chillies
¼ cup finely chopped onion
¼ cup finely chopped capsicum
¼ cup finely chopped carrot
¼ cup de-seeded and finely cut tomato
¼ cup chopped coriander
¼ cup crumbled paneer
½ tsp pepper powder
1 tsp sugar
Salt to taste (Or approx. 1 tsp)
2 tsp oil
½ tsp baking soda
For the garnish
Chopped coriander
Grated fresh coconut
Fine sev
For the tadka (tempering the oil)
1 ½ tbsp oil
½ tsp mustard seeds
2 green chillies
1 tbsp sesame seeds
¼ tsp hing (asafoetida)
8-10 kadipatta (curry leaves)
Procedure
- Whisk the rava and besan together in a mixing bowl.
- Add the yogurt, lime juice (to be added only if the yogurt is not sour enough), salt, sugar and ½ a cup of water. Mix everything. Cover the batter and set it aside for 20 – 30 minutes to allow the rava to soften.
- In the meanwhile, chop all the veggies – the onion, capsicum, carrot, tomato, and coriander.
- After around half an hour, give the batter a stir. It will now be thicker than it was earlier due to the rava absorbing some of the liquid.
- Add around a ¼ cup of water to the batter and stir it well. Then add in the chopped veggies, the crumbled paneer, crushed ginger, crushed green chilies, pepper powder, and the oil. Mix the batter again so all the ingredients are well mixed.
- Adjust the consistency of the batter by adding in some more water (perhaps around 2 tbsp), adding as much is needed to get a batter of medium thick consistency – not too thick and not too thin.
- Finally, taste the batter to see if it needs any more salt. Add more salt if necessary.
- Oil a pan (I’ve used a 7″ diameter round pan) to make it easier to de-mould the steamed dhokla mix. Also, start heating the water in your steamer.
- Next, mix the baking soda into the batter. Stir the batter well to disperse the baking soda evenly inside it. Quickly transfer the batter to the oiled pan. Tap the pan lightly on your work surface to level the surface of the batter.
- Then place the pan in the steamer and steam the dhokla batter for around 25 minutes or until a knife or skewer inserted into it comes out clean. If you use a larger pan, then the dhokla would be less thick and you could steam the batter for a shorter time, perhaps for around 20 minutes.
- Take the pan out of the steamer and allow the steamed dhokla mix to cool completely.
- Later, run a knife around the edges of the pan and then upturn it on a plate. Turn the dhokla slab around on the plate so the upper surface is on top again.
- Heat some oil in a small tadka vessel. Temper it with the mustard seeds and chopped green chillies. Turn off the heat and add the sesame seeds, hing, and kadipatta. Pour the tadka or tempered oil over the steamed dhokla slab.
- Garnish the top with chopped coriander, grated fresh coconut, and fine sev. Cut the slab to get square-shaped or diamond-shaped dhoklas.
- Then serve the dhoklas with coriander-mint chutney mixed with a little yogurt or any sauce or chutney of your choice.
Enjoy!