R015Matta Rice, Properly Cooked
Kerala's parboiled red rice, by absorption and by draining
Recipes › Rice, Grains and the Grain Question in Practice
R022
Millet Upma
Little millet, dry-roasted, with 280 g of vegetables
Photograph: Adobe Stock · representative of the dish
The re-engineeringSemolina replaced with whole little millet, which brings 7.72 g of fibre per 100 g against refined wheat's 2.76 g; the oil held at 12 g for four; and the vegetable weight raised to 280 g, which is more than the millet.
Upma is usually a way of eating refined semolina quickly, and swapping in a whole millet changes its character for the better — nuttier, chewier, and slower to eat. Little millet, samai, is the best of the small millets for this because its grains stay separate, and it carries 10.13 g of protein per 100 g, more than either ragi or rice. Dry-roasting it before the water goes in is not optional: it is what keeps the grains distinct instead of collapsing into porridge.
Before you start: Everything after the mustard seeds happens in sequence with no pauses. Have the millet roasted and in a bowl, the vegetables cut, the aromatics chopped, the coconut grated and 480 ml of water at a boil in a kettle before you light the flame under the oil.
Millet Upma
Active 20 minutes Total 35 minutes
Scale
4 servings
Ingredients — tap to tick off
- ✓160 g (¾ cup) little millet (samai), rinsed and drained well
- ✓12 g (2½ tsp) coconut oil
- ✓2 g (½ tsp) mustard seed
- ✓15 g (1 tbsp) Bengal gram dal (chana dal)
- ✓4 g (2 sprigs) curry leaves
- ✓12 g (about 2) green chillies, slit
- ✓10 g (a 2 cm piece) ginger, finely chopped
- ✓80 g (about 8) shallots, thinly sliced
- ✓100 g (about 1) carrot, in small dice
- ✓100 g (¾ cup) green beans, in 1 cm lengths
- ✓80 g (½ cup) green peas, fresh or frozen
- ✓3 g (½ tsp) M07 the 70:30 salt
- ✓480 ml boiling water
- ✓30 g (about ⅓ cup) freshly grated coconut
- ✓juice of half a lime
Allergens: Mustard.
Equipment: Heavy 26 cm pan or cheena chatti with a lid; a dry pan for roasting. Substitute: roast the millet in the same pan you cook in, then tip it out and wipe the pan — you lose two minutes and a bowl.
Per serving (estimated)
| Energy | 264 kcal |
| Protein | 7.7 g |
| Fibre | 7.8 g |
| Net carbohydrate | 36.4 g |
| Total carbohydrate | 44.2 g |
| Sugars | 5.6 g |
| Fat | 8.3 g |
| Saturated fat | 5.6 g |
| Sodium | 230 mg |
From ICMR-NIN IFCT 2017 and USDA FoodData Central. Per-serving figures stay the same when you scale.
Method — tap a step to mark it done, tap a time to start a timer
- Dry-roast the rinsed and thoroughly drained millet in a dry pan over a medium flame, stirring constantly, until the grains are dry to the touch, have turned a shade darker and smell distinctly nutty rather than grassy, . Tip into a bowl. Wet millet will not roast; it steams, and you will be there ten minutes.
- Heat the coconut oil in the wide pan over a medium-high flame until a mustard seed dropped in pops within 2 seconds.
- Add the mustard seed and cover for the 10–15 seconds it takes to finish popping. Add the chana dal and stir until it turns pale gold, 45–60 seconds.
- Add the curry leaves, green chilli and ginger — the leaves will spit — and stir 15–20 seconds until the leaves go brittle.
- Add the shallots and cook, stirring, until soft and translucent with the first hint of gold, .
- Add the carrot and beans and cook , until the carrot has lost its raw edge but still snaps under a spoon.
- Pour in the boiling water with the salt and bring it back to a full boil. Using boiling water rather than cold is what keeps the grains separate.
- Add the roasted millet in a stream, stirring once to distribute it. Cover, drop to the lowest flame, and cook . At , scatter the peas over the top without stirring and cover again.
- Rest off the heat, covered, . It is done when the grains are tender and distinct, no free water shows at the base, and the upma comes away from the side of the pan in one mass. Fork through the grated coconut and the lime juice and serve warm.
Why this worksDry-roasting drives off surface moisture and starts to dextrinise the outer starch, so each grain seals slightly and takes up water more slowly than its neighbours' starch can gelatinise and glue them together. Adding boiling rather than cold water does the same job from the other side: the grain hits gelatinisation temperature before it has time to swell and stick.
Sourcing note
Little millet is samai in Tamil, saame in Kannada, kutki in Hindi, and is sold in Indian shops and health-food shops as "little millet". If you cannot find it, kodo millet (varagu) behaves almost identically at the same weight and water. Note the caution in the reference tables: IFCT 2017 labels its A017 "Varagu" entry inconsistently between kodo and foxtail millet, so a foxtail-millet figure from that table is not trustworthy — buy foxtail if you like it, but the panel below is computed for little millet. Frozen peas are fine, added in the last five minutes.
If you are watching…
Blood sugar: 7.8 g of fibre per portion is the highest figure in this chapter, and 36.4 g of net carbohydrate is moderate for a full breakfast. The honest caveat from R021 applies here too and rather less severely: this millet is whole and coarse, cooked thick, which is the state in which millets keep their advantage. It is still a starch. Weigh it.
Blood pressure: 230 mg per portion. Leave the M07 out and finish with lime and a pinch of plain salt at the table for about 160 mg.
Cholesterol: 5.6 g of saturated fat, and almost all of it is the 30 g of grated coconut plus 12 g of coconut oil. Halve the coconut for about 3.8 g, or swap to gingelly oil and keep the coconut for about 4.5 g. The coconut is bringing 3 g of fibre with it, which the oil is not.
Swap it
Little millet → kodo millet (varagu) at the same weight and water. Slightly softer, slightly earthier. Or 160 g broken matta, which makes a rice rava upma and is what most Kerala households cook.
Little millet → 160 g coarse semolina (rava), for the conventional dish. Fibre drops from 7.8 g to about 3.5 g a portion; it cooks in 6 minutes rather than 12. (Allergen: this swap introduces gluten (wheat).)
Coconut oil → gingelly oil. Saturated fat drops by about 1.1 g a portion, and the nuttiness suits millet better than it suits rice. (Allergen: this swap introduces sesame.)
Add 60 g cooked kadala or sprouted green gram at step 9 → protein up about 2.5 g and fibre up about 2 g a portion, and the plate now carries its pulse without a second dish.
Scale it
The 3:1 water ratio drops slightly at eight servings because less evaporates from a deeper pan.
Make ahead · store · freeze
The millet can be dry-roasted a week ahead and kept in a jar; the vegetables can be cut the night before. Fridge 2 days covered. Freeze 1 month; millet freezes better than rice and comes back with less textural loss. Reheat covered with 2 tablespoons of water per portion until steaming hot throughout, 3–4 minutes.
Leftovers
Press cold upma into a flat cake, cut it into wedges and pan-fry in a teaspoon of oil until crisp on both sides — a genuinely good second dinner. Or crumble it into R087 with extra buttermilk.
Troubleshooting
Sticky, porridge-like mass: the millet was not roasted, or cold water was used. Both matter; do both.
Grains still hard after 12 minutes: not enough water, or the flame was too low to hold a simmer under the lid. Sprinkle 60 ml of boiling water over the surface, cover, and give it 5 minutes more.
Bitter aftertaste: the chana dal or the curry leaves burnt. Chana dal turns from gold to brown in about 20 seconds at that heat.
Vegetables mushy: they were diced too small or went in too early. Carrots in 6–8 mm dice, beans in 1 cm lengths, and the peas last.
Serve with
R087 Moru Kachiyathu · R086 Rasam · a coconut chammanthi from Chapter 23 · M06 the Low-Sodium All-Purpose Podi
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