How to Make Sun-dried Spicy Onion Balls

We use lot of onions or shallots (we call them as Sambar onions) in our cooking but due to their short shelf life could not buy more than necessary for a week.

In this instructable I have explained how you can make spiced onion balls and sun-dry them for long time storage.

• 250 grams of Onions. Here I have used shallots
• 3/4th cup of husked Black Gram Lentils
• 15 pieces of Garlic cloves
• 12 to 15 pieces of dried Red Chillies
• A bunch of Curry Leaves
• 2 teaspoons of Fenugreek seeds
• 2 teaspoons of Mustard seeds
• 3 teaspoons of Cumin seeds
• 1/2 teaspoon of Asafoetida powder
• One tablespoon of cooking oil

• Soak the Black Gram lentils in water for about 30 minutes
• After soaking, drain out the water and make a rough paste using a mixer-grinder. Do not add any water while grinding
• Transfer the paste to a large bowl and keep aside

• Remove dry skin from shallots. If you are using onions, then you can chop them into large pieces
• Shuck Garlic and remove stems from the bunch of curry leaves

• Add dried Red Chillies, Fenugreek seeds, Cumin seeds, Mustard seeds, Asafoetida powder, curry leaves and Garlic cloves to the mixer-grinder and make a rough paste

• Add shallots or onions to the rough paste in the mixer jar and once again roughly grind so that the shallots are finely chopped
• Transfer the mix from grinder to the bowl where we have kept the grind black gram lentils

• Add cooking oil to the bowl and mix all ingredients together to form a uniform paste
• Take lemon sized mix in your hand, shape into a ball and keep in a metal plate

• Keep the onion balls in the sun. In about 4 to 5 days, the onion balls will be fully dried.
• You can store the onion balls in an air-tight container for a very long time. Add few grains of sea salt to the container to keep the balls fresh
• Whenever you want to season a dish, just break a ball, fry it in oil and add to the dish.

Seasoning with dried onion balls tastes as good as freshly prepared ingredients and also saves lot of time while cooking