Clean, wash and soak the urad lentil for 5-6 hours or overnight in water. You can even take half and half of both moong lentil and urad lentil. Once soaked drain all all the water and grind it to a smooth paste along with green chillies, cumin, garlic and asafoetida. Don't add water while grinding if you really need just add 1 or 2 tbsp water. Now transfer the paste to a big bowl and whisk it either by hand or by spatula or spoon or with a electric hand blender to make the process easy.

But use electric beater only when you are non frying the vadas or bhalle else it will soak all the oil. After whisking the paste for 5 minutes you will notice it's getting light and pale in colour at this point add baking soda along with 2 tbsp water to make it activate. Whisk or blend again for 3-4 minutes then add salt along with 2 tbsp water and blend again. Always add salt at last when you have to ferment something or to increase the volume. Blend it for 12 to 15 minutes.

After that you will notice it doubles in size and get white in colour. The paste will be like a cake batter forming ribbons. All total I used 1/4 cup water to the paste. Now grease your appe or appam or paniyaram pan or simply put 3 to 4 drops of oil in every section and add the bhalle or vada batter to it. Cover it and cook it on medium flame. You will see air pockets once it rise. Now brush it gently with little oil and flip it. Cook the other side also for 5 minutes on medium flame.

Cook it till your desire colour appear on the vada or bhalle. Meanwhile in a big bowl add water with salt and sugar and mix it. When the vada or bhalle is done take it out and put immediately in the bowl of water with salt and sugar. Put it there for 15 minutes. By the time it will increase in size and be more soft. Let's make yoghurt for the vadas for that in a bowl add yoghurt and water and whisk it well until combine. Now add salt, sugar, black salt, dry roasted cumin powder and chaat masala.

Add all these masalas salt and sugar as per your taste and mix it very well. Make a green chutney of coriander leaves mint leaves and green chillies to use as a topping and make a taramind chutney also. For chaat masala recipe and tamarind chutney recipe you can check my profile you will find there. When vadas are soaked in water take them out gently squeeze them to take out all the excess water and put them in the yoghurt masala mix. Leave it for 15 or 20 minutes and then serve with the topping

You can even plate it like put the squeezed vadas or bhalle in the serving platter add a generous amount of yoghurt on it add some thick yoghurt on top then add green chutney tamarind chutney salt chaat masala dry roasted cumin powder some red chilli powder and serve. Add these toppings as per your taste or like. The soft and spongy almost zero oil dahi bhalle is ready to be served.
Make it and enjoy it with your loved ones.
Happy Cooking😊