Ulavacharuఉలవచారు
⏱ Prep 15m🍳 Cook 45m🍽 Serves 4🌿 Vegan
Video: Mana Chef (YouTube)
Ulavacharu is the rasam Andhra families make when they want something deeply restorative — the cooking water from horse gram boiled until falling-apart tender, spiced with garlic and black pepper, and finished with a punchy tempering of curry leaves and red chilli. It is earthy, subtly thick, and more flavourful than its humble ingredients suggest. Pour it over steaming rice with a spoon of ghee and the combination is its own kind of comfort.
📍 Make it in Plano
This recipe is the same everywhere — but where you buy the ingredients and eat the dish is local to you.
Finding Desi spots near Plano…
Ingredients
- ▪Horse gram (ulavalu / kollu)1 cup
- ▪Tamarind25g (lemon-sized ball)
- Spice paste
- ▪Dried red chillies4
- ▪Garlic cloves4, roughly chopped
- ▪Cumin seeds (jeera)1 tsp
- ▪Black pepper (miriyalu)1 tsp
- ▪Coriander seeds (dhaniyalu)1 tbsp
- Tempering
- ▪Oil2 tbsp
- ▪Mustard seeds (avalu)½ tsp
- ▪Curry leaves (karivepaku)2 sprigs
- ▪Dried red chillies2
- ▪Garlic cloves3, sliced
- ▪Asafoetida (inguva)a pinch
- ▪Saltto taste
🌍 Cooking abroad? Substitutions
- Horse gram (ulavalu / kollu) is sold at Indian and South Asian grocery stores as horse gram, kulthi dal, or uluva. Online Indian grocery retailers also stock it — order a bag and store it dry for months.
- Dried Andhra red chillies (byadagi or guntur) give the right heat and colour; substitute with any dried red chilli you can find, or use 1½ tsp red chilli powder added directly to the simmering rasam.
- A pressure cooker speeds things up considerably. Without one, simmer horse gram in an open pot for 60–75 min; add more water as needed to keep the gram submerged.
Method
- 1Pressure cook horse gram with 4 cups water for 5–6 whistles until completely soft. Reserve ALL the cooking water — this is your rasam base.
- 2Drain the horse gram, saving the water. Lightly crush the softened gram with a ladle; they add body without thickening it to a paste.
- 3Soak tamarind in ½ cup warm water for 15 min; squeeze and strain to extract the juice. Discard the pulp.
- 4Dry-roast coriander seeds, black pepper, and cumin in a dry pan for 1 min. Grind together with 4 garlic cloves and 4 dried red chillies to a coarse paste, adding a little water to loosen.
- 5Bring the horse gram cooking water to a boil. Add tamarind extract, the ground spice paste, salt, and asafoetida. Simmer uncovered for 10–12 min until slightly thickened and fragrant.
- 6Return the crushed horse gram to the rasam. Stir and simmer 3 min more; the rasam should be a cloudy, thin broth — not thick. Adjust salt and tamarind.
- 7Heat oil in a small pan until shimmering. Splutter mustard seeds, then add the sliced garlic, 2 dried red chillies, and curry leaves. Fry 30 seconds — the garlic should just colour.
- 8Pour the tempering over the rasam immediately and simmer together 2 min. Serve hot over rice with a generous spoon of ghee.
A Desi.Net original recipe · part of our Indian Cuisine library. Confirm details and adjust to taste.