Simple Idli Recipe From South India

These soft, spongy and savory rice cakes are made by making a batter of rice and black lentils, fermenting the batter and steaming it in special idli moulds. This is a very common breakfast in South India. It is also served in weddings or other special occasions with sambhar, chutney or idli milagai podi. It also goes very well with non veg gravies like chicken curry, egg curry etc and veg kurmas. Due to its soft texture it is given to kids as early as 6 months. It is also commonly given to ailing patients and old people as it gets easily digested.

Ingredients

• Idli rice - 1 3/4 cup
• Black gram - 1/2 cup
• Fennugreek seeds - 1 tsp
• Salt - 1 tbsp

Method 

1. Soak rice and black gram separately in water for at least 1 hour. Soaking overnight can be done too. Add fenugreek seeds to black gram.
2. Drain the water and grind the black gram to a silky soft texture.
3. Next grind the rice coarsely. Mix it with black gram batter along with salt.
4. Now leave the batter to rest and ferment for at least 6 hours till the batter rises to almost double the size.
5. Grease the idli plates with few drops of oil and fill with idli batter.
    
6. Steam them for about 10 minutes till they rise and become firm. (If you do not have idli stand, grease stainless steel tumblers,  fill it with batter and steam it as shown in the picture.)
    
7. Switch off the stove and let it rest for a minute or 2. After that use a wet spoon to remove the idlis from the idli plate.
    

Serving Suggestion

• Idlis with piping hot sambhar, coconut chutney and vada is an excellent combination.
• Idlis are also served with different types of chutneys, chicken curry, vada curry, tomato curry or some other curries.  
• Idli is one versatile dish that goes well with any curry. My favorite is with carrot chutney.

Idli with Carrot Chutney

Idli with Coconut Chutney, Sambar and Podi

Tips

• During winters, if the batter does not puff up, pre-heat the oven to 250 F , switch it off and put the batter inside.
• 1 Tbsp of cooked rice can be added to the rice while grinding to get fluffy idlis.
• You can use the leftover idlis to make sambhar idli, curd idli, fried idli, masala idli, chilly idli or idli upma.

Variation

• Instead of idli mould, you can use ever silver tumblers to make tumbler idli. It tastes the same as idli cooked in mould, but with the shape of the tumbler.

Tumbler Idli (Glass Idli)