Finally I am succesful in making soft idlis in any season even in cold days. I bought a Double Horse brand Idli Mix from Desi Grocer. This brand comes from Kerala and marketed by Wynad foods in US and may be everywhere available. After two three attempts I finally got procedure today to make soft idlis. All idli making photos follow after this my write-up.
Per instructions
- Took two cups of mix
- added three cups of water
- Mix all together to get consistency of idli batter. I usually use egg-beater like bulb shape with wires and beat for 3-4 minutes until the thick consistency.
- Set aside. and
- take one cup of Urid daal and soak it for about two hours .Yhen grind it in the blender or mixie with water until it is fine batter. This adding extra Urid daal is not in the instruction and this is my successful invention to get soft idlis.
- Mix this batter with other batter in step 4.
- Here is the tricky procedure now
- If you leave it as it is and surrounding temperature is cold like in No. or So. California, even after 24 hours , it will not ferment and dough will not rise.
- Yesterday night, in my No. Calif. apartment I kept this vessel with batter near gas heater. Make sure you put it on cloth or in large outer bowl so that when the batter rises, if it will overflow in this vessel then it will not ruin the carpet.
- In the morning just before I was going to the office, dough had risen slightly. So left everything as it is.
- When I came from office in the evening at 6 pm, to my surprise dough has risen six-seven times and 10% of the dough was lying on the floor on cloth surrounding my batter vessel.
- Usually I make Idlis in the morning but today I felt like eating right away as I already had made Coriander chutney couple of days ago.
- I added four-five tea spoons of salt and stirred well to break all risen foam and made consistent thick batter like yogurt.
- How do I make Idlis? In small 4-5 cup rice cooker steamer part of the vessel of course. Four big idlis are more than enough for one person.
- In the pictured below, rice cooking vessel is for boiling water and top steamer portion is for steaming Idlis.
- I took three idli Donne(Konkani word for SS small bowls called Vati, Marathi word), applied some ghee inside and filled with idli dough 3/4th full and placed them in the steamer. On top of ther bowls I put one extra idli in a shallow bowl so that I can close glass lid for steaming.
- In about 15 minutes, my Idlis are ready.
- I cooled their bottom in cold water so that I could take them out with butter knife easily.
- Idlis were very soft and you could not even buy them in restaurant.
- These type of idlis otherwise I have made it only by grinding in stone grinder which I have it in my so. Calif. home brought it from Mumbai.
- All the idli making pictures I am presenting here.
