Vegetable Cutlet

Vegetable Cutlet is a very healthy snack which can be enjoyed by everyone, particularly children. It is a healthy snack, as it contains variety of vegetables and also very satiable to your appetite. Preparing this cutlet isn't that tedious and time consuming, even though it appears to be an elaborate process.

 

Bread crumbs are used for coating purpose and to give the dark brown colour to the cutlets when deep fried.

 

Basically, cutlet involves 3 steps - 1. Cooking vegetables & preparing vegetable dumplings , 2. Coating the vegetables , 3. Deep frying the coated dumpling.

 

Vegetable Cutlet goes well with tomato ketchup. Also chutneys like mint chutney & tomato chutney are a good accompaniment for this cutlet. If eaten hot, it doesn't require any side dish too.

 

Ingredients:

 

For Vegetable Dumpling:

Vegetable mix: Potato - 1, Carrot - 1, beans - 1, Peas - 1

Cashew nuts - 10, broken into 2-3 pieces

Green chillies - 2, finely chopped

Coriander powder - 1 tsp

Turmeric powder - 1/2 tsp

Red Chilly powder - 1 tsp

Salt - 2 tsp

Coriander leaves - a bunch, finely chopped

Cumin seeds - 1/2 tsp

Ginger-garlic paste - 1/2 tsp

 

For Coating Cutlets:

1. Maida - 1/2 cup to 3/4 cup

2. Bread crumbs - 1 cup

3. Water - 1/4 cup to 1/2 cup

 

Oil - 1 to 2 Cups for deep frying

 

Pre-requisite:

 

1. Cut/chop to  very small pieces these vegetables using a food processor/blender - Carrot & beans. Cook these two along with peas (if pressure cooker is used, then allow just one whistle, else if boiled directly, then cook till vegetable turns very tender).

2. Once the above vegetables are well cooked, strain all the excess water using colander/strainer and squeeze these cooked vegetables between your hands to remove any water from it. Basically, these vegetables should be almost dry for cutlet making.

3. Seperately boil Potato nicely, peel its skin and mash very nice in hand thoroughly and keep ready.

4. For binding vegetable dumplings with bread crumbs, maida water is used. For this, Mix maida in water and prepare a thick paste and keep ready. (For non-vegetarians, you can use egg white for this purpose)

 

Method:

 

For Vegetable Dumpling:

1. In a kadai or non stick pan, add oil, season with cumin seeds, ginger-garlic paste, broken cashews, green chillies and add the water strained vegetables (carrot, beans and peas) and mashed potatoes and mix well.

2. Now add chilly powder, coriander powder , turmeric powder and salt. Cook till the vegetable mix becomes dry and then add coriander leaves, mix well and remove.

3. Cool and make equal size balls and pat them like vada's (thick in size) and keep ready.

 

For Cutlet:

1. In a Kadai, add oil (1 to 2 cups) and wait till it becomes hot.

2. Meanwhile, take the maida water (in a bowl) and bread crumbles (in a plate) side by side. Take one dumpling at a time. First quickly dip the dumpling into the maida water & immediately remove it and put it on the bread crumbles and turn it around couple of times, so that the bread crumbles gets coated on the dumplings evenly on all sides and keep ready.

3. Repeat the step 2 for each of your dumpling. When the oil becomes hot, drop slowly each dumpling into the hot oil and deep fry (you can deep fry about 3-4 cutlets in hot oil, at a time). Turn around the cutlets regularly so that both the sides are fried well.

4. When the cutlet becomes brown on both the sides, remove from oil and transfer onto tissue papers, so any excess oil is absorbed and then transfer into any desirable container.

 

Tips:

1. Potatoes needs to be mashed well and used. This gives the binding of all vegetables.

2. Even after cooking the vegetable dumpling, if you feel it is very watery, add little more bread crumbs to it and mix well. That will absorb the excess water.

3. Do not make the maida water very loose. It should be little thick in consistency similar to bajji batter.

 

Photos : Coming soon...