Veg Manchurian is a tasty Indo Chinese starter dish of fried veg balls in a spicy, sweet and tangy sauce. There are 2 popular variations of making veg manchurian.

• Veg Manchurian Dry – An excellent starter snack or as a side dish with hakka noodles or chow mein.
• Veg Manchurian Gravy (With Sauce) – Makes for a tasty Chinese Main Course. Goes best with fried rice, schezwan fried rice or steamed rice.

Both the recipes taste good and are shared with step by step photos. You can make either of them as per your choice. E.g. You can make veg manchurian dry as a starter snack or veg manchurian gravy for a chinese main course.

About This Veg Manchurian Gravy

Veg manchurian gravy is a super tasty and popular Indian-Chinese fusion recipe of fried veggie balls in a spicy, sweet, sour, umami sauce. A Vegan Recipe.

Manchurian in the Indian lingo is a term for fried veggies or fried meat (fish or prawns or chicken) in a spicy sauce. Manchurian and many other Indian Chinese recipes were an invention of the Chinese community living in Kolkata.

The Chinese style of cooking was largely adapted to suit the Indian palate and also to have more vegetarian options in the cuisine.

For vegetarians and vegans, there are popular variations of manchurian recipes like

To make veg manchurian gravy you will need:

1. Grated or minced veggies: to make veg manchurian you need grated or minced veggies like – cabbage, carrots, capsicum, beans & spring onions (scallions). So you can chop the vegetables in a food processor or chop it with a knife. But using a food processor will save your time.
2. Soy sauce: best to use naturally fermented soy sauce. You can even use bragg’s liquid aminos. While making any recipe with soy sauce in it, I would suggest to use naturally fermented soy sauce or bragg’s liquid aminos.
3. Tomato ketchup – use a good quality or homemade tomato ketchup.
4. Red chilli sauce – to add some heat and pungency red chilli sauce is added. Note that you can use sriracha sauce in place of red chilli sauce.
5. For gluten free options – to bind the flour, use potato starch or tapioca starch in place of corn starch (cornflour). Use rice flour or chickpea flour (besan) in place of all purpose flour (maida).
6. No msg (ajinomoto) –  i do not add msg or ajinomoto in any of the recipes I make. If you want you can add a pinch of it in this recipe.

I love Indo Chinese food. So much was my love for making Chinese food at home that in my teens I would make three of my favorite Indo Chinese recipes often viz, Chilli paneer, corn soup and veg manchurian.

The manchurian recipe presented here is a tried and tested recipe, like all my recipes. the result was a yummy veg manchurian that was excellent with plain rice.

Manchurian also goes well with fried rice, schezwan fried rice or steamed rice or even bread or chapati or roti.

How to make veg manchurian gravy

For ease of reading, I have divided this post into 3 main parts.

• Step 1 – making veg manchurian balls
• Step 2 – frying veg manchurian balls
• Step 3 – making manchurian gravy or sauce

Lets start with step 1 – making the veg manchurian balls
1. Take the finely chopped or grated veggies in a bowl.  you will need ½ cup finely chopped red cabbage, ½ cup grated carrot, ¼ cup finely chopped capsicum (green bell pepper), ¼ cup finely chopped french beans and ¼ cup finely chopped spring onions. You can also add regular green cabbage instead of red or purple cabbage.

2. Then add the dry ingredients – 2 tablespoons corn starch, 2 tablespoons all purpose flour (maida), ½ teaspoon black pepper and ½ teaspoon salt or add as required.

3. Mix and gather the whole mixture together. Then kind of mix and knead so that the veggies leave the water and you get a dough-like mixture. But do not knead like that a bread or roti dough. Gluten strands can form that will give a dense chewy texture in the fried veggie balls. So just mix very well and press so that the veggies release their juices.

4. Then take a small portion of the mixture in your hands.

5. Press and roll it in your palm and make a round veggie ball.

6. Make all veggie balls this way and keep aside. You can spread some oil on your palms while making the vegetable balls.

Frying vegetable manchurian balls

7. Heat oil for deep frying in a kadai or pan. Add a small piece of a ball to the hot oil. If the balls does not stick or settle down at the bottom of the pan, but comes up steadily the oil is ready for frying these veggie balls. If the balls break, then some more binding agent is required. So you can add 2 to 3 teaspoons of some more all-purpose flour (maida).

8. Gently place the balls in the hot oil. The oil has to be medium hot. Too much heat and the manchurian balls will be browned from top and uncooked from inside. Less hot oil will make the balls absorb too much oil.

9. When cooked from one side, turn the balls with a slotted spoon.

10. Fry the balls till crisp and golden turning them over a couple of times. Remove them with a slotted or perforated spoon and drain as much as oil as possible.

12. Place the fried manchurian balls on kitchen paper towels. For a low-fat version, you can cook the veggie balls in an appe-appam pan or æbleskiver pan.

13. Fry the veg balls this way in batches and keep aside.

Making manchurian gravy

14. In a small bowl take the following three sauces – ½ tablespoon soy sauce, 1 tablespoon tomato ketchup, 2 to 3 teaspoons of red chili sauce.

15. Mix the sauces very well and keep aside.

16. In another small bowl take 1 tablespoon cornflour (corn starch) and 2 tablespoon water. Mix very well and keep aside.

17. Heat 1 to 1.5 tablespoons oil in a pan or wok. Add 4 tablespoons chopped spring onions, 1 tablespoon finely chopped ginger, 1 tablespoon finely chopped garlic and 2 green chilies (finely chopped).

18. Stir fry on medium flame till the onions turn translucent.

19. Now add the mixed sauces.

20. Stir and mix very well.

21. Add 1 to 1.25 cups water.

22. Let the mixture come to a boil.

23. Mix the cornflour paste again in the bowl (as the cornflour settles at the bottom) and then add in the pan.

24. As soon as you add cornflour paste, mix very well so that there are no lumps.

25. Continue to stir and mix when the manchurian gravy is cooking. Simmer till the manchurian sauce thickens and you see a glaze in it. There should be no raw taste of the cornflour in the sauce. Cooking sauce or gravy takes about 3 to 4 minutes on a medium flame. If the sauce is too thick, then you add some water. If it is too thin, then you can add some cornflour.

26. When the manchurian gravy thickens, add ½ teaspoon black pepper powder.

27. Season with a bit of salt. Do keep in mind that the soy sauce, chilli sauce and tomato ketchup already has salt in it. So add less salt and as per your taste preferences.

28. Add ¼ to ½ teaspoon sugar or more if required. Mix very well.

29. Then add the fried vegetable balls. Also add 1 teaspoon rice vinegar or regular vinegar or apple cider vinegar.

30. Gently stir and coat the fried vegetable balls in the gravy.

31. Switch off the flame and add chopped spring onion greens.

32. Serve veg manchurian hot garnished with some spring onion greens. It goes well with veg fried rice or schezwan fried rice or plain steamed rice and even bread or chapati or rotis.

This post is from the archives and has been republished and updated on 30 May 2020. 

About Dry Veg Manchurian

Veg manchurian dry is a tasty Indo Chinese starter dish of fried veg balls in a spicy, sweet and tangy sauce.

It is one of the dishes that we order when we have dinner in a Chinese restaurant. Its one of my favorite Chinese dishes from childhood and a recipe I would make from my teens.

On occassions I make this dry manchurian version as a side dish with veg noodles.

The only time taking part in making dry vegetable manchurian is the grating/chopping the veggies. so the recipe does take time to prepare with frying the vegetable balls and then preparing the sauce.

For less work you can make the veg balls a day before and use them the next day.

Serve veg manchurian dry as a starter snack or as a side dish with Hakka Noodles or Veg Chow Mein.

How to prepare veg manchurian dry

For ease of understanding, I have divided this post in 3 main parts.

• Step 1 – preparing the veg manchurian balls
• Step 2 – frying veg manchurian balls
• Step 3 – making veg manchurian dry

Lets start with step 1 – preparing the veg manchurian balls

1. Take the finely chopped or grated veggies in a bowl. Here I added ½ cup finely chopped red cabbage, ½ cup grated carrot, ¼ cup finely chopped capsicum/green bell pepper, ¼ cup finely chopped french beans, ¼ cup finely chopped spring onions.

2. Add the dry ingredients – 2 tbsp corn starch, 2 tbsp all purpose flour, ½ tsp black pepper and ½ tsp salt or add as required.

3. Gather the whole mixture and kind of mix and knead so that the veggies leave the water and you get a dough like mixture.

4. Take a small portion of the mixture in your hands.

5. Press and roll it in your palm.

6. And make a round veggie ball.

7. Make all veggie balls this way and keep aside.

Step 2 – frying veg manchurian balls

8. Heat oil for deep frying in a kadai or pan. Add a small piece of ball to the hot oil. If the balls does not stick or settle down at the bottom of the pan, but comes up steadily the oil is ready for frying these veg manchurian balls.

9. Gently place the balls in the hot oil. The oil has to be medium hot. Too much heat and the manchurian balls will be browned from top and uncooked from inside. Less hot oil will make the balls absorb too much of oil.

10. When cooked from one side, turn the balls with a slotted spoon.

11. Fry the balls till crisp and golden.

12. Remove them with a slotted or perforated spoon and drain as much as oil as possible.

13. Place the fried veg manchurian balls on kitchen paper towels. For a low-fat version, you can cook the veggie balls in an appe-appam pan or æbleskiver pan.

14.  Fry the veg balls this way in batches and keep aside.

Making veg manchurian dry

15. Once the veggie balls are fried, then its time to make the sauce. In another pan, heat about ½ tbsp of the same oil in which we fried the balls or sesame oil. Add ½ tbsp finely chopped garlic, ½ tbsp finely chopped ginger & 1 or 2 green chilies, finely chopped.

16. Stir and saute for a minute on a low flame.

17. Add ¼ cup chopped spring onions or onions.

18. Stir and saute till the onions soften.

19. Now add the sauces – ½ tbsp soy sauce, 1 tbsp tomato ketchup and 1 tsp red chili sauce or green chili sauce.

20. Stir very well.

21. Keep the flame on the lower side and sprinkle ¼ tsp corn starch. Adding corn starch is optional.

22. Stir very well.

23. Quickly ¼ tsp black pepper and salt as required. Stir again. After adding corn starch the sauce will begin to thicken, so one has to be quick. Keep a check on the salt as the soy sauce, tomato ketchup and chili sauce already has salt. So add less salt.

24. Then add the fried veg manchurian balls.

25. Stir so that the sauce coats the veggie balls evenly.

26. Switch off the flame and add ½ tsp rice vinegar or regular white vinegar.

27. Toss and stir again. Serve veg manchurian dry hot as a starter snack garnished with some spring onion greens.