Adai
Preparation Time
10 minutes
Cooking Time
38 minutes
Difficulty Level
easy
Meal Type
Breakfast
Serves 4
Key Ingredients
- Sona masoori rice
About This Recipe
Adai is a lentil dosa: rice and dals ground together, cooked thick on a tawa and eaten hot, with no overnight wait. Where a dosa ferments, an adai only soaks, so it fits weekday breakfasts and packs into a lunchbox.
The batter here is one cup of rice to half a cup of dals, toor and chana in equal parts, a 2:1 rice-to-dal ratio that keeps the adai crisp at the edges while the lentils give it body and a savoury depth. The grind matters more than the mix: coarse, like fine semolina, so the batter holds texture. The onion, chilli and curry leaves go on top of the poured adai and are pressed in, not mixed through, so the edges stay thin and lacy while the middle carries the topping.
Sona masoori rice soaks in the same three hours as the dals and grinds easily; any everyday raw rice works, but keep the measure the same. Swap the chana dal for more toor if that is what the shelf holds, or add a handful of urad dal to the soak for a lighter adai. Rice and dal make up the batter here; our guide to chawal (rice) covers the grain, and the fermented dosa shows the same pairing the slow way.
Ingredient List
Serving Size:
1x
2x
3x
Batter
- Sona masoori rice — 1 cup
- Toor dal (arhar dal) — 1/4 cup
- Chana Dal — 1/4 cup
- Dried red chillies — 3 pieces
- Ginger, chopped — 1 tsp
- Salt — 1 tsp
- Water — 1 1/4 cups
Toppings
- Small onion, finely chopped — 1 piece
- Green chilli, finely chopped — 1 piece
- Curry leaves (fresh, or a few dried), chopped — 8 leaves
- Fresh coriander leaves, chopped — 2 tbsp
For the tawa
- Groundnut oil — 2 tbsp
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Serving Suggestions
Serve hot with coconut chutney, a tomato-onion chutney or avial; adai holds up to any of them. Cold adai in a lunchbox needs nothing more than a little chutney. For a thicker, softer pancake from a similar rice-and-dal batter, the uttapam is the other end of the scale.
Tips for Cooking Adai
The batter must pour thick, like thick pancake batter that coats the back of a spoon; a thin batter spreads into a flat, tough adai. Keep the tawa genuinely hot, or the first adai will stick. Grind in short bursts and check the texture with your fingers rather than the clock. Stir the batter well before every pour, because the grains settle, and spread from the centre out in a spiral, a little thicker than a dosa.
Chef’s Note
A coarse grind is what separates adai from dosa: the lentils should stay a little gritty so each bite has texture, and grinding the chillies in with the batter seasons every adai evenly. A serving of two adais comes to about 327 kcal with 9.4 g of protein, most of it from the rice and the two dals together, and 4.4 g of fibre.
Per serving (approx.): 327 kcal, protein 9.4 g, carbs 52 g, fat 8.6 g, fibre 4.4 g. Computed from IFCT 2017 / USDA values for the listed quantities. Measures: 1 cup = 240 ml, 1 tbsp = 15 ml, 1 tsp = 5 ml.
Happy Cooking
!!
ByCOWBERRY
Apr 18, 2026
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