Idli, a delicious, gut-friendly food from south India

These delicate, fluffy, moon-like Idlis--steamed, south Indian style lentil and rice cakes--are not just fun to eat, they are fat-free, full of protein, and really great for you.

If you love fermented foods and understand the immense benefits they bring to your health, you should be making Idli, a five-ingredient dish that originated in south India and has dug roots in kitchens across the rest of India and in Indian kitchens around the world.

Even if you aren't Indian, you've likely at least eaten an Idli at an Indian restaurant. This porous, fluffy white disc could easily be the healthiest food in the world and it is made of two basic and very healthy building blocks -- rice and lentils. Eaten by itself, an idli tastes bland. But served with a sambar and a green coconut chutney, it becomes one of the most delicious foods you will ever eat. 

This is also food for everyone--and anytime. Gluten-free? You can't do better than an idli with its perfect-protein combination. Trying to lose weight? Idlis are extremely low-calorie, fat-free and probiotic.  Sick? An idli will nurture your digestive system right back to health. Picky eater? No kid can resist a soft little moon to dunk into creamy, savory, green coconut chutney. And you can eat an idli at any time -- it makes a delicious south Indian breakfast, lunch or dinner.

There are many kinds of idlis, but the recipe I have for you today is for a basic Idli -- the only way Idli was eaten before people started adding oats or cream of wheat or whatever to gild its perfection. And while I'm just as guilty as the next cook of improvising, this is also the idli recipe that gets made most in my home, because you never really can best a classic, can you?

Making an idli sounds simple enough, but for me, finding the perfect idli recipe was more challenging than finding the perfect dosa recipe. Both dosa and idli batters are made with rice and lentils, and both are typically fermented, but while a dosa is cooked into a crisp, golden crepe on a griddle, an idli is cooked by steaming it in a special mold. This means your idli batter has to be just so. Otherwise your idlis either won't set or they will harden up to the point where you simply won't enjoy them.

Don't let that put you off, though, because I've done all the hard work for you. If you follow instructions carefully, and make sure you use all of the ingredients in the exact proportions and follow the right times for soaking your rice and lentils and fermenting the batter, you can have the perfect idlis and eat them too.

You need just five ingredients for this idli recipe, including two kinds of rice. Some Indian recipes use idli rava instead of rice--a kind of coarse-ground semolina made with rice flour.

My idli recipe is healthier, because you can make the idli batter using brown rice. I add the brown rice in combination with the parboiled rice that's typically used for making idli batter, and there's tons of healthfulness added to an already nutritious recipe with no loss in flavor or texture.

I also toss in a handful of flattened rice or poha, which I told you about not long ago in this Kande Pohe post, because it greatly improves the texture and fluffiness of the idli. You also need the fenugreek seeds to help the good bacteria thrive and flourish.

Idli ingredients

All of these are easily available at Indian groceries or online.

• Parboiled rice. This is the kind available at the Indian store, not the kind sold in supermarkets here. The rice is sometimes labeled as "idli rice".
• Brown rice (white rice is fine too). Use any rice you have on hand, including basmati rice.
• Black gram lentils or urad dal
• Flattened rice or poha/aval
• Fenugreek or methi seeds
• You don't need to add salt to the idli recipe although you can if you want to. Add it just before you steam the idli.

How to make the idli batter recipe

• Soaking the rice and lentils: You need to soak your black gram lentils (urad dal) and the two rices -- regular or brown rice and parboiled rice -- separately and overnight. Soak the poha or flattened rice and the fenugreek seeds with the udad dal. Overnight is great, but you can also do this for about six hours in the daytime.
• Blending the idli batter: Once the lentils and rice have soaked, drain them and then grind them, again separately, with fresh cold water. The texture you grind each to is important for how your idlis will turn out, so don't try to make quick work of it by grinding them together. The lentils have to be ground into a very smooth paste, while the rice needs to be just slightly coarser. In India and online here in the U.S. you can buy a wet grinder designed specifically to grind idli and dosa batter, but you don't need one. A strong blender does a great job of making perfect and soft idli batter. I use my Vitamix and bonus, it takes a fraction of the time a wet grinder would.
• Fermenting idli batter: Once you've got both to the right texture, you mix them in a large bowl and set the batter aside to ferment for about eight hours, preferably in a warm place or in the oven with the light turned on. Once your batter has fermented, you will see it. The batter will look puffy and will rise quite a bit (it's a good idea to put a plate or a baking sheet under the bowl -- I've had to deal with an overflow of fermented dosa batter in the oven and it was NOT fun to clean up). 

How to steam idlis

• You do need an idli mold to form the idlis (I added an affiliate link in the recipe card). It is not expensive and it'll last you a lifetime. In addition, if you are in India and have access to an inexpensive idli steamer you can use that to steam the idlis in. Otherwise a large stockpot with a lid that has a vent hole will do. If you use a pressure cooker, you need the kind that has a vent at the top on which you place the pressure regulator or "whistle". This is because you don't really want to pressure cook your idlis-- you want to steam them, so you don't need to put on the pressure regulator.
• When your batter is ready, lightly coat the individual plates in the mold with cooking spray. This is not absolutely essential, but it's something my parents did, and it makes the idli really easy to slide out after it's steamed. Now fill each little mold with the batter, stopping just short of filling it all the way up, because the idlis will puff up a little as they steam. To make the process of easier, I start out by filling the plate at the bottom, then place the second plate on top, fill that up, slide in the third, fill it up, and so on. If you were to fill in the molds first and them put the whole thing back together, you'd have a mess on your hands.
• Place the trivet in your pressure cooker or stockpot and add about an inch of water. Now place the idli mold on top of the trivet, put on the lid of the pressure cooker (without the pressure regulator on) or stockpot, and turn on the heat to medium-high.
• When you see wisps of steam beginning to escape from the vent on the pressure cooker or in the lid of your stockpot, set your timer to 10 minutes. Once your timer goes off, turn off the heat. I let the idlis stand in the stockpot for a couple of minutes, then carefully remove the mold and let them stand at least five more minutes before sliding them out. You need to apply light pressure with your fingers at the corners to ease the idli out. 

What do you serve with idli?

Any kind of chutney or sambar is awesome. Here are some suggestions:

• Coconut chutney
• Onion chutney
• Roasted red pepper chutney
• Onion sambar
• White pumpkin sambar

I used the coconut chutney this time. Now here is the recipe for a really delicious, fluffy, amazing idli that'll go right to the top of your list of south Indian breakfast favorites.

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