I distinctly remember that as a child, I did not like the taste of anything sweet anytime of the day, but especially during breakfast. I hated cereal, bread with jam, pastries, etc. To be honest, I still hate all those for breakfast. For me, breakfast has to be savory and preferably Indian. I can’t imagine how hard it must’ve been for my mom that I didn’t eat the most ubiquitous of foods!

However, it all comes back – my daughter now has almost same food preferences! She hates sweets and prefers a savory Indian breakfast. Her favorite is dosa, and idly comes in a close second. I’ve been experimenting with different varieties of idly and dosa, in order to balance her nutrition. One of my favorites has been oats idly.

Coming back to our trip and planning out A’s meals, I decided I would make some instant idly and dosa mixes which could be mixed with water / yoghurt and used to prepare idly or dosa quickly at our AirBnB accommodation. I have a microwave idly plate similar to this one. While I’ve not had great success with idlies made from the standard fermented urad dal + rice batter, I have been quite satisfied with rava idlies. Oats idlies are similar to rava idlies in principle and lend themselves well to instant formulae, so I figured why not. There are two stages to this recipe: making the mix, and then making the idlies. In this post, I’ve shared both stages. I’ve shared the stove-top method for making the idlies here, plus a guideline for the microwave method. The microwave method may vary across microwaves due to differing powers, differing sizes of microwave idly plate, etc. Anyway, on to the recipe. It is inspired by Veg Recipes of India.

Mix:

Ingredients (makes 4 cups of mix):

Oats (rolled or quick-cooking) – 2.5 cups
Semolina / rava / sooji – 1.5 cups
Oil – 2 tsp
Dry Red chillies – 5
Urad dal – 2 tsp
Cumin seeds / jeera – 1 tsp
Mustard seeds – 1 tsp
Green chillies – 6 -8 or to taste
Ginger – 1 inch, grated fine
Asafoetida / hing – 1/2 tsp
Salt to taste (I used 2 tsp)
Dehydrated coriander leaves (optional) [*]

Method:

1. Powder oats, keep aside.
2. Heat oil. When oil is hot, add mustard seeds.
3. When mustard seeds splutter, add cumin seeds, urad dal, dried red chillies broken in half and asafoetida.
4. When the above ingredients turn brown, lower the heat to a minimum. Add the green chillies and ginger. Fry these until the green chillies and ginger are both crisp and all the moisture has been cooked out. This is important as we want the idly mix to last for a few weeks and for that, the mix shouldn’t have any excess moisture.
5. Add the powdered oats and the rava. Roast until the entire mix is golden.
6. Remove from heat and allow to cool completely. Add salt and dehydrated coriander leaves [*].
7. Store in an airtight jar and use as per need following the method below.

[*] If you love coriander in your food as much as I do, you can add dehydrated coriander leaves to your mix! Here’s what you do. Heat the oven to the lowest temperature you can. Finely chop a couple of tbsp of coriander leaves and spread on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper (important – the leaves shouldn’t be in direct contact with the baking sheets). Leave in the oven until dried out completely. I turned off my oven after 10 minutes, and then left the leaves in there for 6 hours until they were dehydrated.

To make idlies from mix:

Ingredients:

Instant idly mix – 1/2 cup (makes 6 idlies)
Plain yoghurt – 1/2 cup
Eno fruit salt – 1/2 tsp
Water – 1 tbsp if required

Method:

1. Beat yoghurt and idly mix together. Leave aside for 5 minutes.
2. Grease idly plates.
3. Add water if the batter has thickened too much.
4. Add Eno fruit salt.
5. Stovetop method: cook for 15 minutes and allow to cool for 5.
6. Microwave method: cook on high for 1 minute, flip, cook on high for another 30 seconds.
7. Serve hot with condiment of choice.