The usual way to make dosa or idli batter involves lentils and rice grains. This creates the perfect texture and gives a crunch to this South Indian staple. People use this same batter to cook other regional dishes like idli, uttapam, appam, and more.
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But now, as times change, you have the chance to try new ingredients. You can swap out the usual lentils for different items in your pantry to whip up a healthy batch of dosa batter. This lets you cook your favourite dish with new flavours and improve your cooking skills.
Oats Dosa Batter
For a healthy twist to South Indian dosas, try making the batter using oats. You will need to grind oats with urad dal and rice flour to get the texture right so that the dosa boasts a crispy surface. It will lighter on your digestive system and make for a nutritious meal. You can serve it traditionally with aloo masala mix, coconut chutney, tomato chutney, and sambar.
Besan Dosa Batter
You can swap out rice and lentils for chickpea flour to make a tasty dosa mix. Just mix it with rice flour, salt as you like turmeric powder, and red chilli powder for a quick batter. People often call the dosa made from this mix a chilla. It goes well with chutney or a zesty blend of diced onion, tomato green chilli, lemon juice, and coriander leaves.
Millet Dosa Batter
With millets taking over the culinary world because of their properties to benefit humans immensely, you can experiment with the variety to create different variations of this popular South Indian dish. Kodo millet, foxtail millet, and barnyard millet are among the popular choices to mix with urad dal to create a healthy batter with a grainy texture.
Sprouted Dosa Batter
Mix sprouted moong dal with urad dal and brown rice to make a blend with the right thickness and feel. Adding sprouted lentils gives a sour taste, helps the mix ferment faster, and boosts the health benefits of the batter.
Quinoa Dosa Batter
Quinoa can take the place of rice in your dosa batter with urad dal. Add a bit of rice flour to make it crispy. Quinoa has lots of protein, so it's easy to see why it's good to add to dosa batter. This super-healthy food will make your meal tastier and better for you.
Rava Dosa Batter
If you want dosa right now, rava lets you make quick batter. You'll need to add a little maida and rice flour to hold it together and make sure the dosa turns out crispy. Mix the dry stuff with water curd, veggies you like, salt, and coriander leaves. This will be your quick fix to stop hunger in under 15 minutes.
Adai Dosa Batter
When you start experimenting with dosa batter, you don’t have to let go of the traditional ingredients but add a few unconventional ones. For adai dosa batter, grind rice with moong dal, chana dal, urad dal, and toor dal. Add some spices and red chilli powder to the concoction to add an oomph factor and make crispy dosas with it.