Ingredients and Method to make Instant Oats Idli
- 3 cups oats (1 minute quick cooking oats)
- 1 1/2 cups fine semolina (rava)
- 5-6 green chillies cut very fine (the small thai variety) ( or according to taste)
- 2 tsp split chick pea lentil (chana dhal)
- 6 tsp broken cashew nuts
- 2 tsp mustard seeds
- 2 tsp salt ( or according to taste)
- 1 tsp baking soda
- handful cilantro cut fine
- 2 tbsp olive oil (or any other oil)
- plain yogurt (about 4 1/2 cups for the entire quantity of oats idli powder)
Dry roast the one minute oats in a heavy bottomed pan on medium to medium high heat stirring continuously until it turns creamy/light brown. Keep aside to cool for a few minutes.
In the meanwhile dry roast the semolina on medium to medium high heat for 3-4 minutes stirring continuously, then remove from heat and keep aside to cool.
When the oats is cooler, grind coarsely in a spice grinder in batches. Take care to process these in short bursts as they grind very quickly and they only need to be ground to a coarse consistency.
Mix the cooled semolina and coarsely ground oats together.
Add to this mixture salt to taste and baking soda and mix well.
Heat oil, add mustard seeds to it, when mustard seeds begin to splutter add split chick pea lentil (chana dhal) and cashews to it and saute for a few seconds.
When the lentil and cashews begin to turn brownish, add cut green chillies to it and saute for about a minute until the green chillies start to change color.
Pour this oil + lentil + green chillies mixture on the dry mixture of oats and semolina. Mix very well.
Take out the required amount of this mixture and mix with equal parts of plain yogurt. Add cut cilantro and mix well.
Grease idli moulds and place spoonfuls of this mixture into each mould and steam for about 6 to 7 minutes.
Remove from heat, cool for about a minute, remove each idli and serve with sambar or chutney of choice.
For about 1 1/2 cups of this mixture the yield was approximately 12 medium sized idli’s
Notes:
The unused portion of the oats idli powder can be refrigerated and will stay fine for about a week to 10 days.
Do remember that once the idli powder is mixed with yogurt it needs to be steamed immediately otherwise it will not rise well so only mix required quantities of mixture with yogurt.
The fine semolina can be substituted with coarse semolina
You can very easily double or half this recipe to make quantities that you require. Just maintain the proportion of 2: 1 for oats to semolina
This turned out to be very mild with the number of green chillies I used so if you like your idli’s really spicy then you may want to increase the number of green chillies in this recipe
If you do not have an idli mould you could very easily place the mixture in a greased curved stainless steel plate, steam until done and cut into squares before serving.
