Himachali Recipe

Sepu Vadi Recipe – Mandi’s GI-Tagged Dham Centrepiece

Why Sepu Vadi is Special

This sepu vadi recipe is the centrepiece dish of the Mandi Dham: urad dal dumplings fried and then simmered in a spinach and curd gravy until they soften and take up the flavour. Mandi’s sepu vadi received a Geographical Indication tag in July 2026. Cooked from ready vadis, it takes about forty minutes.

What is Sepu Vadi?

Split urad dal, soaked and ground to a paste, whipped until it holds air, then steamed in a flat tray. That sets into a firm cake, which is cut into diamonds and fried. Those fried pieces are the vadis.

On their own they are dense and fairly plain. The point of them is what happens next. They go into a gravy and sit there, and because a fried dal cake is essentially a sponge, they drink it. A vadi that has been in spinach gravy for ten minutes tastes nothing like the thing that came out of the oil.

The dish belongs to Mandi. You will find versions across Himachal, and it turns up in the Kangra Dham too, but Mandi is where it sits at the centre rather than the edge. A Mandiyali Dham without sepu vadi is not considered a Dham at all, and it is the dish people judge the whole meal by.

Sepu Vadi Recipe Ingredients

Sepu Vadi Recipe Method

1. Fry the Vadis

   Heat mustard oil over medium heat and fry the vadis in batches until they deepen in colour and firm up, roughly two to three minutes a side. How long they need depends on how dry they are, so watch the vadis rather than the clock. Drain and set aside.

2. Make the Gravy

   Blanch the spinach for two to three minutes and blend to a smooth purée. Heat the mustard oil until it just starts to smoke, then lower the heat. Add the cumin, black cardamom, cloves and cinnamon.

   Add the coriander powder, turmeric, fennel powder and chilli powder, and stir for a few seconds. Add the spinach purée and cook for four to five minutes.

   Lower the heat and stir in the whisked curd gradually, stirring without stopping so it does not split. Add 1 to 1½ cups of water for a medium-thick consistency, season with salt, and simmer for eight to ten minutes.

3. Finish

   Add the fried vadis and simmer gently another eight to ten minutes so they soften through and take up the gravy. Rest ten minutes before serving.

What Makes the Difference in a Sepu Vadi Recipe

One thing to check on your packet. Some sun-dried vadis are meant to be soaked for half an hour before frying, others go straight into the oil. It depends how they were dried and how thick they were cut, so follow what the maker says rather than a general rule.

What Do You Serve With Sepu Vadi?

Plain steamed rice. The whole construction is built around something soaking up gravy, and roti cannot do that job.

• Himalayan Red Rice is closer to how it is eaten in the middle hills, where the firmer grain holds up under a wet dish instead of going to paste
• Himalayan Black Rice works if you want the contrast against the green
• White rice is what most Mandi households actually use

At a Dham it arrives among the wet courses after the rice and dal, usually alongside madra and a sour preparation such as khatta. At home it needs nothing beside it, though a spoon of curd on the side is common.

Bringing Himflavours to the Table

A Mandi Dham dish deserves ingredients from the same hills. Frying the vadis in Pahadi Desi Cow Ghee gives the dish the richness a Dham kitchen would recognise, and serving it over unpolished Himalayan Red Rice or Himalayan Black Rice keeps the meal as close to its origin as it gets outside Himachal.

Sepu Vadi Recipe – Frequently Asked Questions

By Vineet Sood