Recipe: Veg Manchurian

An Indian-Chinese appetizer where crisp fried vegetable balls are dunked in slightly sweet, sour and hot manchurian sauce

Chef Sanjyot Keer

1. Add the veggies, sauces, seasoning & butter, mix well.

2. Further add refined flour and cornflour, mix and combine well and squeeze the mixture lightly and mixing. rest the mixture for 5 minutes.

3. You can adjust the addition of refined flour and cornflour depending on the moisture level of the veggies, if you feel the mixture has too much of moisture you can little more, but make sure you do not squeeze too much.

4. After the resting, dip your hands in water and take a spoonful of mixture and shape into balls, by the time you shape, set oil for deep frying.

5. When the oil is hot, around 150°c -160°c, deep fry the manchurian balls on medium flame until crisp and golden brown, so it gets cooked from inside, do not fry them on low heat or high heat.

6. Remove them on absorbent paper.

7. Set another wok on high flame for making sauce, add oil, chopped onions, ginger, green chillies, and garlic, sauté for 1-2 minutes.

8. Add vegetable stock/hot water and mix well, further add soy sauce, green chilli paste, vinegar, salt & white pepper to taste, spring onion greens and bulbs, fresh coriander leaves and aromat powder, mix well and bring to a boil.

9. In a small bowl, add 2 tbsp cornflour & 2 tbsp water and mix to make slurry. set asode. add the slurry to the wok and cook until the sauce thickens slightly, you can adjust the quantity of cornflour depending how thick or thin you want your manchurian gravy to be.

10. Once the gravy is done, add the fried manchurian balls and cook for 1-2 minutes, and serve immediately serve with hot fried rice.

11. Make sure to add fried balls just when you're about to serve, keeping the balls in gravy for long time will make them soggy.

12. Your manchurian is ready along with hot fried rice, serve and enjoy.