Idli (Steamed Rice and Black Gram Bread)
Time Soaking: 6–10 hours Prep: 10 minutes Fermentation: 8–12 hours Cooking: 11–15 minutes Ingredients 6 Steps 12
Idli is a round, fluffy bread roughly eight centimetres in diameter. It is made from ground rice or rice flour mixed with ground urad dal, salt, methi (fenugreek seeds) and water. The mixture is allowed to ferment prior to being steamed in an idli steamer. They are traditional to Southern India and are most often eaten with sambar.
Ingredients
- 4 cups parboiled short-grain rice
- 1 cup skinless white urad dal
- 2 teaspoons non-iodised salt
- 1 teaspoon fenugreek seeds (methi)
- 2 cups chlorine-free water for fermenting (see note)
- Fermentation starter (optional; see note)
Steps
Batter
- Wash rice and urad dal thoroughly.
- Soak rice and urad dal in separate bowls, no more than 2 hours. Soak methi seeds with urad dal. Use about twice as much water as dal.
- Drain rice and urad dal. Keep dal soaking water. Discard rice soaking water.
- Grind urad dal to fine paste in blender, adding reserved soaking water if needed.
- Grind rice to paste with about 1 cup chlorine-free water (less if possible). Grind coarsely for idli only, finely if also for dosa.
- Mix rice and urad dal pastes well. Season with salt.
- If desired, stir in fermentation starter.
- Set aside somewhere warm to ferment 8 hours.
- Grease idli pans well with ghee or vegetable oil.
- Spoon batter gently into idli pan indentations. Do not stir or break the batter; trapped bubbles make idli fluffy.
- Steam 12 minutes (16 minutes for brown rice).
- Remove idli with sharp knife or thin spatula.
Notes from the original
- A traditional stone grinder is recommended for making idlis. A blender will do a reasonable job; do not use a food processor.
- Idli is made of black lentil and rice. The southern parts of India use boiled rice, while the rest uses raw rice. It depends on your taste. The black lentil should be the full, round variety. Avoid broken dal.
- The ratio of black lentil to rice should not exceed 1:3 or 1:4 by volume. If you have good quality dal, you can stretch this ratio by increasing the quantity of rice.
- The rice is typically parboiled short grain white rice, but brown rice works well also and adds flavour, colour, and more nutrition. Brown rice needs to be soaked at least 4–6 hours.
- Mix the dal and rice batters thoroughly. It takes more time and energy than you might think. Uneven mixing causes many failures. Mixing them by hand works best!
- A warm temperature is essential for fermentation. 25–28 °C (77–82.4 °F) will be ideal. If the weather is cold, keep some warm water in a large bowl and immerse the vessel containing the batter. To help maintain the temperature of the warm water bath, cover it with a blanket, or better, use a regulated heater, like a heating pad or aquarium heater. Even easier, turn on the light in the oven, and use that to keep the batter warm.
Source. Adapted from “Cookbook:Idli (Steamed Rice and Black Gram Bread)” by Wikibooks contributors, revision of 2025-06-19, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Changes. Steps rewritten into short commands. Introduction shortened. Wiki formatting removed. This adapted recipe is shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Photo. Idli1.jpg by Nick Gray, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia. Resized; otherwise unchanged.