Sabudana which is also known as Sago or Tapioca comes from tropical palm trees. In India, Sabudana is used to make various fasting recipes. Hence during festive or fasting season you’ll find variety of food prepared using sabudana.

Among various recipes, Sabudana Vada is one of the popular snack. Traditionally it is deep fried but it can be prepared in Appe Pan as well which is less oil version. If you are wondering wondering what is Appe pan then it is a round shaped pan with multiple round cavities (check below images for reference). This pan is used to prepare famous South Indian snack – Appe (hence it’s called as Appe Pan :)) I find the idea of making vada using Appe pan very convenient as it consumes less oil and overall process of frying is less messy.

For this recipe, I have used small sabudana pearl which requires minimum soaking. Thus for 1/2 cup sabudana, only 30 minutes soaking should be sufficient. But you can use any available type of Sabudana. Following recipe will yield 14 Vada’s in appe pan.

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Ingredients:

1/2 cup sabudana

1/2 cup peanuts

2 large potatoes

2 green chillies

1 & 1/2 tsp cumin seeds

Salt for taste

Oil for frying

Method:

Firstly, soak sabudana in water, keep water level just till the top of sabudana. Do not add too much water else sabudana will be soggy. If you are using big sabudana pearls then it requires 5-7 hours of soaking.

Dry roast peanuts on medium-high flame. Blitz roasted peanuts until it becomes granular, you can make powder as well.

Take boiled potatoes and mashed them thoroughly. Add soaked sabudana and peanuts to mashed potatoes along with finely chopped green chillies and cumin seeds. Add salt as per taste to the mix and combine everything well. Make a small balls to fit in cavities of Appe pan using this mixture.

Take Appe Pan on a medium high flame. Once pan is hot, add little oil in each cavity. Add prepared balls to each cavity and fry them on medium high flame.

Turn vada’s using spoon until they are golden brown from all sides. If required, add little oil from sides while frying. Remove them once they are cooked from all sides.

Saabudana Vada/Appe are ready to serve. Serve it with sweet curd or any chutney.