Thalippu Vadagam

1. Soak the onion for 10 minutes and peel them. This step reduces the crying phase of this recipe.

2. Cut each onions into quarters and roughly grind them to very coarse paste or finely chop the onions in a food processor.

3. Peel the garlic and grind them to a coarse paste as well.

4. Take a Big bowl (preferably stainless steel) and add chopped onions, garlic, mustard seeds, cumin seeds, urad dal, fenugreek seeds, turmeric and salt.

5. Gently mix all the ingredients with clean hands** or a spatula. Do not crush the mixture.

6. Keep the mixture aside for about 3 days or until all water oozes out from the mixture while mixing them once every day.

7. *The 4th day morning squeeze out the water from the mixture in a container and add the dry mixture in a baking sheet and sundry the mixture.

8. At night put the dry mixture into its juices and allow it to marinate overnight.*

9. Repeat steps (7 and 8) until all the juices are absorbed. It will take approx.3-5 days if your climate is hot.

10. When all the water is absorbed make them into balls of golf ball size. Since they will still have some moisture in them you can make perfect balls.

11. Next day apply some oil in your palm and coat the balls with the oil and dry them under sun. Follow this until the balls become dry and hard. approx. 3-5 days more.

12. Now your vadagam is ready to use and can be stored in an air tight container for over 6- 12 months.

*, ** - See Tips

1. **If you are new to indian cusine then wear gloves when handling the ingredients at all stages.

2. *If you don’t want balls you can skip step 10 and just spread the mixture on the baking sheet or any flat surface and allow the mixture to sun dry. Which takes approximately 2-4 days.

3. Vadagam is used as tempering for most of the traditional south Indian dishes.