Idli

The pleasures of health abide in the man who eats moderately. The pains of disease dwell with him who eats excessively. - Thirukural

Idli

Idli  is  our favorite breakfast. Even after eating so many years, we are not bored of idli.   Before the invention of stainless steel, vengala (bronze) idli pot was used for making Idli. To avoid idly sticking to the idly plate, cotton cloth was used and batter poured over the cloth.  To get the Idli out of the cloth and washing the cloth was really a tedious job those days.

Also I still remember attukal (stone grinder) in which my mom used to grind the idly batter, I used to sit by her side and watch her curiously. She used to teach me some of my school homework or sometimes she used to tell me stories while grinding idli (Multitasking). Now we are lucky, our wet grinder do all the grinding works for us and also the stainless steel idli plates solves most our problem.

Ingredients:

• Parboiled rice/ Boiled rice – 3 cups
• Sona Masoori / Raw rice – 2 cups
• Urad dhal – 1 and ¼ cups
• Fenugreek – 1 tsp
• Salt - to taste.

Procedure:

1. First soak the parboiled rice and sona masoori rice in water for more than 6 hours or even overnight.
2. Also soak the fenugreek in water for 6 hours.
3. Soak Urad dhal in water for 1 to 2 hours.
4. Next grind the soaked urad dhal in a wet grinder, until it is fluffy. Use very little water while grinding urad dhal.
5. Remove urad dhal batter from the grinder and then grind the rice with fenugreek. Grind it until, you get a smooth batter.
6. Remove rice batter and mix it well with the urad dhal batter. Wash your hand and use hand to mix the batter, good bacteria in our hand will help in the fermentation process.
7. Add salt to taste, mix well and leave it overnight for fermentation. Make sure that the Container should be half filled with batter, if not there won’t be enough space for the batter to ferment and rise. If the temperature is below normal room temperature, keep the batter in the warm place such as oven (with lights on).
8. Next day batter must have raised, again mix it well. Grease the idli plate and pour idli batter. Plate should not be filled full, let it filled ¾ th.
9. Heat the idli pot or pressure cooker with water, when the water boils steam cook the idli batter for 15 minutes. If you are using pressure cooker, cook it without whistles for 15 minutes.
10. Check with the tooth pick, if the tooth pick comes out clean switch off the stove.
11. Take the idli plate out and let it cool for 5 minutes, then with the help of a spoon remove idli from the idli plates.
12. Serve hot with sambar, chutney, kuruma or vada curry.