Suji Idli

I am back from my 3 day trip to Niagara Falls Canada and Toronto during the long holiday weekend and the trip was really awesome. It was a long drive roughly around 8 hours, but I love travelling so I guess my tiredness was balanced with the excitement that I had to visit the Niagara Falls.

I tried this amazing Suji (Rawa) Idli’s the other day and was a bit concerned initially about how it would turn out because I don’t have the traditional idli steamer with me and I had thought of using the muffin molders and covering it with aluminium foil and then transferring it in the oven (i.e. gas oven) for around 7-8 minutes, but then thought to myself, lets give it a try and to my surprise the idlis were yum and tasty.

I did share the recipe with my close friend via email and with my mother in law via telephone and they tried and tested it as well and were happy to find an easier solution to make quick and easy idli’s in a less than 30 minutes.

Here is the recipe of the Suji Idli’s:

Ingredients:

1 cup suji (rawa)
1 cup yogurt (dahi)
1 tea spoon green chilies (finely chopped) - optional
1 tea spoon jeera
1 tea spoon rai
3-4 kadi patta leaves
2-3 tea spoons chopped coriander
a pinch of hing
3 tea spoons Eno ( fruit salt)
Salt to taste
Water to thin the yogurt
1 tea spoon oil.
Oil for greasing the muffin molds.


Method:

Heat a non stick pan with oil and add hing, rai, jeera, kadi patta to it. Once the rai and jeera start to splutter add the suji and roast it till it turns slightly brown. Take care not to burn the suji and not to over heat it. Transfer to a plate and let it cool for 10 minutes.

In another bowl add the dahi and whisk it well. Add the chopped coriander and chopped green chilies. Add some salt to it as well according to taste and mix it well. Slowly add water to dahi till you get a slightly thinner consistency. Don’t add too much water at once. The consistency should be more like that of a lassi (buttermilk). Then add roasted suji to add and mix well. Grease the muffin molds with oil so that the idli doesn’t stick to the molds. Add eno to the suji and dahi batter and mix well and immediately pour the batter in the greased muffin molds. Cover the mold with the aluminium foil completely so that the mold is air tight from all the sides with the foil. Place the muffin mold in the gas oven and steam the idli for around 6-7 minutes.

The fragrance from the oven will tell you that the Suji idli is ready to be removed. Once you remove the muffin mold let it stand for sometime. This makes it easier to remove the idli from the edges of the molds and it also prevents them from breaking. Remove the idli from the muffin molds and serve with chutney and sambar while it is still hot.

You can also add chopped cabbage to the idli batter as a variation. One more thing that we need to be careful about is that add eno to the amount of idli batter that you would be steaming at one time as it is not advisable to keep the batter with eno already added to it for a long time as it does not bake the idli’s that well.

You can definitely substitute the muffin molds with the idli steamer and steam the suji idlis in the traditional manner over the gas stove as well. Infact these idlis can be steamed in the microwave as well. Just change the muffin mold or the idli steamer with the microwave safe steamer and steam the idlis for around 3-4 minutes.

Suji Dhokla can also be made from the above mentioned recipe. The only thing that differs is adding the batter to the greased plate and putting the plate in the pressure cooker and pressure cooking them without the whistle for around 10 – 15 minutes till the time the dhokla is done. One way to check whether the idli or the dhokla is ready is to insert the knife in the center and if it comes out clean then the idli or dhokla is done if not keep it again for more time till the batter is cooked completely.

Enjoy!!!!!!!!!!!!