Soft Spinach Idli

This is a South Indian dish, but It is very famous street food all over India. I have learned this recipe many year back during my visit to Muscat, I had a neighbour who kindly shared this recipe and it worked perfectly every single time I prepared. I have seen so many recipes which adds poha (flatten rice) or mamra (puffed rice) but I never dared to change my recipe “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it?”.  This time I had some spinach in my fridge so I decided to  use the same idli recipe and added blanched spinach paste. So this one is even more healthier.

This recipe makes soft and spongy idlis. It only needs 4 ingredients and few drops of oil. It can be serves as breakfast or as a main dish. This recipe serves 3-4 people.

Please note that you can see printable version at the end. You need to use chrome browser to print or save the copy of the recipe.

Preparation Time: 30 minutes

Cooking Time: 30 minutes

Ingredients:

2 cup rice
1 cup urad dal ro whole skinless urad
1 tsp fenugreek seeds
1/2 cup cooked rice
Salt to taste
1 cup spinach paste
Little oil

Procedure

1. Wash and soak rice in one pot and urad dal with fenugreek seeds in another pot for 4-5 hours.

2. Remove water from rice and dal. In a blender, first grind soaked urad dal with little water to a fine paste and remove in a big container. Then grind soaked rice with 1/2 cup cooked rice and some water. Add this mixture with urad dal paste in the container. Also add enough salt to this mixture. This batter should not be too runny or it won’t ferment properly. Mix (whisk) everything using clean hand for almost 10 minutes. Leave this container in a warm place until batter is fermented and double in size. Mine took around 18 hours as I live in Canada. It can be faster in warm places. If it is too cold, turn on the oven light and keep the batter in there.

3. Just before you are ready to prepare idli, heat a big pot with some water. When it is hot, add cleaned and washed spinach leaves. Cook for 1 minute and turn off the heat. Transfer these spinach to cold water. Let it completely cool down. Then squeeze out all the access water from boiled spinach and grind it to a paste. You can add more spinach for greener idli.

4. Then add spinach paste to idli batter and slowly fold it together. Do not over mix. I did half while and half with spinach.

5. To steam idli, heat a big pot (steamer) which can fit idli stand. Add 2 glass of water and bring it to boil. Grease idli mold with little oil. Do not stir the batter at all . We have already salted the batter so no need to mix. You want to keep that foam as it is. Just take a little batter from the top with a spoon and fill each mold

6. Put the idli stand in the steamer and steam it for at least 15 minutes. You can also use pressure cooker if it fits idli stand. Just remove the whistle and let idli steam for 15 minute.

7. After 15 minutes, turn off the heat. Let steamer cool down a bit. Then carefully remove idli stand and keep on side for sometime until you can handle. Unmold each idli using spoon (yes that is the easiest way to remove idli from the mold).

8. Idli taste the best when they are hot. These idlis t tastes much better than we eat at any restaurant. It is healthy as there is very little oil used. Urad dal adds the protein. You can eat these with sambhar or toor daal rasam or tomato rasam and with chana-urad dal chutney, tomato chutney and  coconut chutney,. If there are left over idlis, you can make fried idli, chili idli (video recipe), etc.

I would love to know if you tried making these idlis at home and do share your experience with me 🙂

Please leave a comment or let me know if you have any questions.

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