Idli is a dish originating in South India and is a popular breakfast and snack item across the southern regions and neighbouring countries such as Sri Lanka where it is part of the Tamil cuisine.

I first sampled this dish when living in lower-central hill city of Badulla in Sri Lanka. It was love at first bite! Idlis are soft, fluffy rice cakes that are made by steaming a fermented rice and lentil batter in an apparatus called an idli cooker. The typical cooker contains a steamer and racks of idli moulds. Making idli sounds deceptively simple. contrarily it takes quite a bit a trial and error much like the dosa recipe previously written about. The main struggle is getting the batter to ferment properly. Fermentation depends on multiple factors both ingredient and environment-wise. Therefore, recipes for idli are often not consistent. After many years of following different advice and recipes, I believe I found a fool proof method of making the perfect idli every time. And that is a cheat method of adding a bit of yeast to the batter.

Ingredients

• 2 cups parboiled rice (idli ponni rice)
• 2/3 cup urad dhal
• ½ tsp fenugreek seeds
• ½ tsp yeast (optional)
• Salt to taste

Method

Wash well and soak the rice and urad dhal separately for at least 3 hours. Fenugreek should be added to the soaking urad dhal. Drain the urad-fenugreek and reserve the water. You should have about 1 -1 ½ cups soaking water. Drain the rice and discard the water. Grind the rice to a fine paste using the reserved water as needed. Place the paste in a large bowl. Now grind the dhal using the reserved water as needed to obtain a fine paste. Add this to rice paste. you can add the remaining soaking water to make a fairly thick batter akin to cake batter. Do not make it watery. Add the yeast and mix well using hands (this is very important for the fermentation process as the hands transfer heat needed). Cover the bowl making sure its airtight and place in a warm dark area (like oven) to ferment overnight. (If using yeast, you do not need to keep it so long. The batter should be ready in 4-5 hours.) Add salt to taste, mix well and pour into greased idli moulds; steam till cooked (about 10-12 mins). Let the iddlis cool for about 2 mins before removing from the moulds.

For video of making idli click here.

Serve with sambar and coconut chutney.