Gobi Manchurian

Popular Indo-Chinese Dish, Gobi Manchurian has crispy cauliflower florets tossed in a spicy, sweet and tangy manchurian sauce.

Tastes great with hakka noodles or fried rice! Vegan.

Indians love their take on Chinese. That’s the only Chinese food most people in India know actually.

It’s far from authentic Chinese food, I can tell you that. But it became popular in India many years ago and it’s popularity still remains high.

Some of the most popular Indo-Chinese dishes are hakka noodles, chilli paneer, fried rice and this Gobi Manchurian.

What is Gobi Manchurian

Gobi Manchurian is a Indo Chinese dish.

Gobi is cauliflower, so for this dish cauliflower florets are first fried by tossing them in a flour-cornstarch batter which makes them crispy.

And then they are tossed in a manchurian sauce which is made with soy sauce, vinegar and is slightly sweet and tangy. It can also be spicy if you add a lot of hot sauce which I don’t.

This dish is usually served in two ways- the dry version and the one with sauce (gravy version).

The dry version is usually served as an appetizer and the one with gravy as a main meal with noodles or rice.

My version is somewhere between the two, it doesn’t really have a lot of gravy but it’s not completely dry either.

So you can serve it both ways!

Tips to Make Gobi Manchurian

The process to make gobi manchurian is pretty basic. However there are few things which will help you to make it taste like restaurant style!

1- First, do all the prep work in advance. This goes for all Indo Chinese recipes mostly. There’s a lot of chopping involved and everything should be done beforehand.

Since we saute the veggies on high heat for a lesser amount of time, it’s good to have everything prepped and ready to go.

2- Use quality ingredients– a good soy sauce, a good vinegar will make a difference to the final outcome.

I have used dark soy sauce and regular soy sauce here. I like the darker shade and flavor of soy sauce in this recipe and hence used the dark soy sauce.

If you can’t find it, you can very well use just regular soy sauce.

3- Use the right ingredients– I highly recommend using sesame oil and celery in this gobi manchurian recipe, it will make a difference to the final result.

4- Have the sauce ready before you fry the cauliflower– and add the fried crispy cauliflower to the sauce just before serving.

If you let the sauce and cauliflower sit for long, it won’t remain crispy.

It would still be very good though. So if you don’t make about your gobi manchurian being crispy, then by all the means you can ignore this tip.

Serving Suggestions for Gobi Manchurian

You can serve this semi-dry gobi manchurian as such as an appetizer.

It also goes well with hakka noodles, that’s my favorite combination.

It’s also great with fried rice. Even this pineapple fried rice would be great!

Making Gobi Manchurian Gluten-free

It’s super easy to make this recipe of gobi manchurian gluten-free.

Replace all purpose flour with rice flour in the batter or use arrowroot flour.

Also use gluten-free soy sauce (tamari) in place of regular soy sauce.

 

Method

1- To make the sauce, heat the oil in a skillet on high heat. Once hot, add the grated garlic, ginger, green chili and chopped celery.

Saute for 1 minute until ginger-garlic start changing color.

2- Then add the chopped onion, green pepper and scallions.

3- Cook for high heat for around 3 minutes.

4- Then add the soy sauce, ketchup, vinegar, hot sauce (like sriracha), sugar and white pepper powder. Taste test and add salt if needed. Set aside.

5- Meanwhile cut and clean cauliflower florets and drop them in hot salted water. Simmer on medium heat for around 4 minutes.

6- Drain water and place florets on a paper tissue. Pat dry each individually.

7- To a large bowl, add the flour, cornstarch, ginger-garlic paste, salt and pepper. Whisk and start adding water, little by little.

Form a smooth, free-flowing batter. It should not be too thick or thin.

8- Heat oil for frying on medium heat in a kadai or pan. Once oil is hot, dip the florets into the batter. Make sure they are well coated with the batter.

9-  Drain off the excess batter and carefully drop florets into the hot oil.

10- Fry on medium heat for 6 to 7 minutes, until crispy and browned.

11- Transfer the fried cauliflower florets into the sauce (sauce should be warm when you do this).

12- Toss to combine until all the florets are well coated with the sauce.

Garnish with scallions and serve gobi manchurian with hakka noodles or enjoy as it is!

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This post has been updated from the recipe archives, first published in January 2017.