My verison of the Idli

Idlis, is a savory  of South Indian origin popular throughout  India and is served for breakfast, usually served in pairs with chutney, sambar, or other accompaniments.

For me idli batter is a must in my kitchen, as its my life saver for breakfast. So I make it a point to grind this over my weekend and store for the rest of my working days.  I just make some different chutney each day so that don’t get bored of having idli.  More than anything it saves my time in the morning during my rush hours to work.

Over the weekends I make it a point to make nice dosas (crepes) or uthappams with the same batter they turn out great.  Infact I use a wet grinder to make the  batter and use  the same idli batter for my dosas. Grinding in a wet grinder and in a mixie varies a lot and in volume and in taste.

Idli is prepared in so many varieties some grind it fresh like how I have done it here, like some make the rawa of the rice and grind only urud and mix the idli rawa, all finally have their own taste and loved by all right. This is the way I make to get nice fluffy and yummy idlis and dosas.

Ingredients:

Idli rice  – 3 ¼  cups
De-husked black gram dal / Urad dal – 1 cup
Fenugreek seeds / Methi dana – 1/4  tsp. 

Method:

Wash, soak the rice  and fenugreek seeds in a  vessel and in another vessel soak the urud  dal for 6 hours.

Drain and grind the rice into a smooth batter  – while grinding rice add water little by little. Keep aside this batter.

Now to the grinder add the cleaned and drained urud dal  with little fresh water and let it grind for about  30 minutes till soft, light and fluffy. I am using a wet grinder  here. Keep the batter a little thick.

After 30 minutes of the urad dal grinding, now add in the rice batter to the urud  batter add  salt and allow it  grind for another 10 minutes.  Let the salt, rice and the dals get incorporated well. Now transfer this batter to a big bowl and nicely mix with your hand and leave it to  ferment.

Cover the batter and let it  get fermented so that we can go to the next step. Fermentation takes place between  8 – 10 hours depending on the room temperature.  This is a very important step to get perfect  soft idli.  After the fermentation the batter should be  double the  size of the original batter. Otherwise if you make with the batter that is not fermented,  your idlis will turn to be too hard and you can aim hiting someone with that  like a stone L  or alternatively it will be so spongy and fluffy melt in mouth idlis J

How to make idli

1.         Grease idli moulds with oil.

2.       Mix the batter and depending on the size of the idli plates fill between 3 to 4 tablespoons of batter in each mould.

3.       You could use a pressure cooker or any vessel for that matter to steam idlis. I steam mine in a idli cooker. Before placing the idli plates to the cooker, add some water in the cooker (about 1 inch) and switch on the stove. So by the time you are done filling the batter on the idli moulds, the water will start boiling and you can place the idli stand in the cooker and close the lid. Since the water is already hot and steaming the idlis cook very fast. Around 10 15 minutes the idli will be ready.

4.       Open the lid of the cooker. Remove the idli stand be careful  it will be very hot.

5.       Remove each plate one by one, give a quick wash showing the back sides of the plate, under running water. This will loosen up the idlis and will help in scooping out the idlis from the plate.

6.       Take a small flat spoon or a idli scooper and remove the idlis from the plate.

For the chutney:

Fresh grated coconut - 1/2 the coconut scraped
Fried grams or pottukadalai - 2 tbsp
Shallots - 3 nos.
Red chillie - 3 for grinding  2 for tempering with mustard
Oil - 1 tbsp
Curry leaves - 1 sprig
Salt to taste
Mustard - 1/4 tsp

Method: Take a blender dunk in all the ingredients except the oil, curry leaves, mustard and 2 red chillie. Grind to a fine paste and  do the tempering with  oil, mustard, 2 red chilli & curry leaves. Add salt to your taste. This is the chutney I have served here.

Serve it  hot with your choice of chutney, chamandi or sambar or whatever you have prepared to go with it.

Latha