Pesarattu
Preparation Time
15 minutes
Cooking Time
30 minutes
Difficulty Level
moderate
Meal Type
Breakfast
Serves 4
Key Ingredients
- Whole green moong (green gram)
About This Recipe
In Andhra Pradesh, pesarattu is the everyday breakfast dosa, made from pesalu, the whole green moong, with no rice, no urad and no fermenting; the only planning is the soak. What you get is a dosa that tastes of the bean itself, mild and nutty, with none of the sourness of a fermented batter.
This version soaks a cup of whole green gram for 8 to 12 hours, grinds it with ginger, green chilli, cumin and salt into a thick batter, and spreads it in thin circles on a hot tawa under a scatter of onion, green chilli, ginger, cumin and coriander. The result is crisp at the rim and soft in the middle, and the onion-ginger topping does all the seasoning.
How thin you spread it decides what you get: a lacy pesarattu is shatteringly crisp, while a thicker one stays soft like a chilla and is kinder to a first try. A tablespoon of rice flour in the batter makes the dosa easier to handle. For upma pesarattu, set a ladle of hot upma in the centre and fold the dosa over it. Ground fresh, the batter needs no resting; covered in the fridge it will keep until the next morning.
Ingredient List
Serving Size:
1x
2x
3x
Batter
- Whole green moong (green gram) — 1 cup
- Ginger, chopped — 1 tbsp
- Green chillies — 2 pieces
- Cumin Seeds — 1 tsp
- Salt — 1 tsp
- Water — 3/4 cup
Topping
- Small onion, finely chopped — 1 piece
- Fresh coriander leaves, chopped — 2 tbsp
- Ginger, finely chopped (for the topping) — 1 tsp
- Green chilli, finely chopped (for the topping) — 1 piece
- Cumin seeds (for the topping) — 1/2 tsp
For cooking
- Groundnut oil — 2 tbsp
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Serving Suggestions
Serve hot from the tawa with allam pachadi, the ginger chutney that usually sits beside it, or with coconut chutney and a bowl of sambar. Stuffed with hot upma and folded, the same dosa becomes upma pesarattu. Two dosas make a breakfast; with a glass of chaas they make a light dinner. The same bean cooked whole is sabut moong dal, and sprouted it goes into a sprouts salad.
Tips for Cooking Pesarattu
Grind the beans smooth rather than thin: whole-moong batter carries flecks of green skin that tear the dosa, and a thick batter is easier to spread than a runny one. Spread fast, in outward circles, with the wet back of the ladle before the batter sets. The tawa must be hot enough that water drops sizzle and vanish, or the first dosa sticks. Use the first dosa as a test and adjust before pouring the next.
Chef’s Note
Pesarattu is pure whole moong, with no rice or dal in the batter, so two dosas make a serving of about 213 kcal, 11.3 g protein and 8.5 g fibre, nearly all of it from the bean and the rest from the oil on the tawa. Do not skin or sift the beans; the green skin is part of the dish. If you fold upma inside, count that serving separately.
Per serving (approx.): 213 kcal, protein 11 g, carbs 23 g, fat 8.1 g, fibre 8.5 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
Sep 14, 2026
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