Pesarattu

Breakfast Recipes, Dosa varieties, Indian gluten-free recipes, Low-GI recipes, Weight loss recipes

We often felt shy talking about food during our childhood days as we might get teased by our peers or others as gourmands. Nowadays, it is a welcome trend that the kids are happily wielding small ladles to cook up their favorite meals (thanks to the TV shows like Masterchef Juniors), and the teens turn to food critics with élan. Today the gourmands proudly declare themselves the foodies and try various cuisines. Apparently, a foodie would find Pesarattu, the golden green crepes, served with melt-in-mouth savory sooji (upma), flavorful lentil stew (sambar), spicy ginger chutney and creamy coconut chutney as a gastronomic delight.

pesrt-3 Pesarattu
Andhra Pesarattu Dosa stuffed with upma

Pesarattu is a protein-rich dosa made of whole green gram (moong dal) popular in Andhra Pradesh & Telangana. It may be served simply with a chutney or as an elaborate meal as shown here.

pesrt-1 Pesarattu
Pesarattu with upma, sambar, ginger chutney & coconut chutney

Pesarattu Recipe:

We can make it spongy or crispy, and there is no need to cook both the sides of crispy dosa, but we need to cook both the sides of a spongy dosa. Now let’s prepare crispy pesarattu:

Ingredients:

For batter:

  • 1½ cup of whole green gram (paasi payaru)
  • 1 green chilli
  • 1½” of ginger root
  • ½ tsp of turmeric powder
  • ¼ tsp of cumin seeds (jeera)
  • 1¼ tsp of salt
pesrt-ingr Pesarattu
Pesarattu ingredients

For garnishing:

  1. Finely chopped onion and coriander leaves
  2. Rava upma
pesrt-grnsh Pesarattu

Pesarattu batter:

  • Wash green gram and soak them overnight (or for 5 hours).
  • Drain the water completely.
  • Grind them along with green chilli, ginger, turmeric powder, cumin seeds and salt into a smooth paste. (You may have to grind them in batches according to the capacity of mixer jar.)
  • Add enough water to get the required consistency to draw soft or crispy dosa.
  • Now the batter is ready to use (it is not required to leave this batter for fermentation).
pesrtbtr Pesarattu
Pesarattu batter

Pesarattu preparation:

  • Heat dosa griddle in medium flame.
  • When the griddle is hot, reduce the flame to low and then smear oil over griddle using an onion as shown below.
  • Pour batter in the centre and spread out in circular motion using a flat ladle to draw a thin dosa.
  • Now increase the flame to medium.
  • Drizzle oil over the dosa.
  • Sprinkle finely chopped onion & coriander leaves.
  • Cover and cook until dosa comes off the griddle.
  • Remove the lid and then place a ladleful of rava upma on the one half of dosa.
  • Fold dosa in half and remove from griddle using dosa spatula. (It is not required to flip thin dosa to cook the other side.)
  • Reduce the flame to low and repeat the same for making another dosa.
  • Serve hot pesarattu with coconut chutney, ginger chutney & sambar.
psrtmakng Pesarattu
Preparing pesarattu

Side dish for pesarattu dosa:

  • Ginger chutney is the ideal accompaniment as it helps in digestion of protein-rich dosa.
injichutny Pesarattu
Ginger chutney, a perfect side dish for pesarattu
  • I prefer to make creamy cashew-coconut chutney that goes well with this dosa.
cashewchutney Pesarattu
Coconut-cashew chutney

Pesarattu Paniyaram:

  • We can also make paniyaram using an appe pan with the left-over batter (fermented for 5-6 hours) as shown below.
pesrtpaniyrm Pesarattu
Pesarattu paniyaram
  • We can serve these paniyaram with chutney & sambar.
pesrt-4 Pesarattu
Pesarattu paniyaram with sambar & chutney

Tips & Tweaks:

  • It is easy to draw dosa when we add idli rice or millets (I tried varagu arisi) along with lentils, it is also useful to enhance the texture and flavor.
pesrt-millet Pesarattu
Pesarattu using millets
  • We can also serve this by spreading tomato chutney over the dosa before stuffing it with upma. This itself is a delicious meal and hence there is no need to make any other chutney or sambar as accompaniments.
pesrt-serve Pesarattu
  • For dosa making tips you can refer to my earlier post here.

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  11. I can’t find whole green gram here… so (you may think I am crazy ^^) I used lentils, green beans (moong beans), and almond to make the batter, and then I follow the rest of your recipe. It works although I know it is not the same taste of your delicious recipe.
    Thank you for sharing! I have learned a lot from your culture and experiences!

    1. Oh, great. It is really a wonderful idea to use almonds in here. Generally we use lentils & rice for making any dosa batter, but for pesarat there is no need to add rice. So next time you can try the same with little rice, you will definitely get the same as mine.
      Thanks so much for trying my recipes.

        1. Any rice used for making flour can be ideally used in here, if it is used for cooking alone you may have to increase the quantity of rice.
          Have a great weekend!

  15. The dosa lover inside me has just risen awake by this sumptuous delicacy. It looks absolutely lovely and the twist you added about turning this dosa batter into ‘paniyaarums’ is simply amazing. This goes into my recipe book.

    1. Of course there is a dosa lover inside me too, who urged me to borrow this healthy & tasty dosa recipe from Andhra cuisine. 🙂 Thanks Pranitha!

  25. Hi Megala – I’ve never heard of pesarat – it looks similar to a dosa – possibly still a little beyond my Indian culinary skills but does look delicious!

    1. Yes, it is indeed similar to dosa but easier than dosa. I think you can very well try your hand like a pancake. 🙂 Thanks so much.

  27. mouth watering and very healthy dosa.
    Is there a reason that the dhal should be ground without water and add water later? Can I add water when grinding? my food processor would not grind if there is no water. So wondering it that would have any difference in the consistency of batter.

    1. No, not all, you can very well pour water while grinding. I’m afraid to do so as I may end up making the batter watery, and I feel a lot better to adjust the consistency by adding water at the end. Primarily pesarat batter has to be thicker than regular dosa batter, and yet it is easy to draw thin pesarat. Hope you would try it sometime soon. 🙂
      Thank you.

    1. I used to make paniyaram using any left-over batter of adai, ragi dosa, etc., as it gives a new dimension, hope you would like to try and relish them as we did. 🙂 Thank you so much for reading my posts !

  47. That looks and sounds wonderful. It looks so good that I literally just finished breakfast and would gladly eat that as a second breakfast right now.

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