R015Matta Rice, Properly Cooked
Kerala's parboiled red rice, by absorption and by draining
Recipes › Rice, Grains and the Grain Question in Practice
R023
Kerala Khichdi
Matta rice and moong dal in one pot, with coconut and curry leaf
Photograph: Adobe Stock · representative of the dish
The re-engineeringThis dish is the re-engineering. Rice cooked with a pulse rather than beside one, at 25 g of dry dal a head — the direct kitchen expression of Mohan's brown-rice-plus-legumes arm — and the fat held to 12 g of coconut oil plus 25 g of grated coconut for four.
Kerala does not have a canonical khichdi; the north does, and Kerala has kanji, puzhukku and the rice-and-dal logic scattered across a dozen dishes without one name to gather them. This recipe gathers them. It is built to make the single best-evidenced instruction in this book — put a pulse on every rice plate — impossible to forget, because the pulse is in the pot. Adding 50 g of legumes a day to a rice diet lowered 24-hour glycaemic area under the curve by 22.9% against white rice, more than swapping to brown rice alone achieved at 19.8% (Mohan et al., 2014). One pot, one flame, thirty-five minutes.
Before you start: Rinse and drain the rice and dal together and leave them to sit while you cut the vegetables. Twenty minutes of standing damp does most of the work a soak would.
Kerala Khichdi
Active 20 minutes Total 45 minutes
Scale
4 servings
Ingredients — tap to tick off
- ✓160 g (¾ cup) unpolished parboiled matta rice
- ✓100 g (½ cup) green gram dal (moong dal), preferably lightly dry-roasted
- ✓12 g (2½ tsp) coconut oil
- ✓2 g (1 tsp) cumin seed
- ✓3 g (1 sprig) curry leaves
- ✓10 g (about 2) green chillies, slit
- ✓12 g (a 2.5 cm piece) ginger, finely chopped
- ✓8 g (about 2 cloves) garlic, finely chopped
- ✓80 g (about 8) shallots, sliced
- ✓120 g (about 1) tomato, chopped
- ✓2 g (1 tsp) ground turmeric
- ✓1 g (½ tsp) freshly ground black pepper
- ✓100 g (about 1) carrot, in 1.5 cm dice
- ✓150 g (about ⅙ of one) ash gourd (kumbalanga), peeled and in 2 cm dice
- ✓3 g (½ tsp) M07 the 70:30 salt
- ✓1.1 litres water
- ✓25 g (¼ cup) freshly grated coconut
- ✓juice of half a lime
Allergens: None of the major allergens.
Equipment: Heavy 4-litre pan with a lid, or a 3-litre pressure cooker. Substitute: a pressure cooker at 3 whistles then 5 minutes on the lowest flame, which saves about 12 minutes and gives a softer, more integrated result — the traditional texture, in fact.
Per serving (estimated)
| Energy | 322 kcal |
| Protein | 11.1 g |
| Fibre | 7.9 g |
| Net carbohydrate | 52.4 g |
| Total carbohydrate | 60.3 g |
| Sugars | 5.5 g |
| Fat | 6.5 g |
| Saturated fat | 5.0 g |
| Sodium | 240 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
- Rinse the rice and dal together in two or three changes of water until the water runs almost clear, and leave them in the sieve to drain for .
- Heat the coconut oil in the pan over a medium flame. Add the cumin and let it sizzle until it darkens by a shade and smells toasted, 20–30 seconds.
- Add the curry leaves, green chilli, ginger and garlic. Cook, stirring, until the raw garlic smell has lifted and the mixture smells sweet, 90 seconds to .
- Add the shallots and cook until soft, translucent and just turning gold at the edges, .
- Add the turmeric and pepper and stir for 20–30 seconds only, until the dusty raw smell goes. Ground turmeric burns and turns bitter in under a minute at this heat.
- Add the tomato and cook until it collapses completely and the mass pulls together, .
- Add the drained rice and dal and stir for , until coated and glossy.
- Pour in the water with the salt, add the carrot, and bring to a full boil.
- Cover, drop to a low flame, and cook . At , add the ash gourd, stir once, and cover again — it needs about and turns to mush in 25.
- Check at . It is done when the matta grains have opened and softened with no chalky core, the dal has broken down and thickened the liquid, and the whole thing is loose and spoonable rather than dry — somewhere between a thick soup and a wet rice. Add 100 ml boiling water if it has tightened too far.
- Finish off the heat with the grated coconut and the lime juice, folded through with a flat turner. Rest and serve hot, in bowls, with a spoon.
Why this worksCooking the pulse with the grain works twice over. Moong dal's soluble fibre and its own starch raise the viscosity of the whole pot, slowing gastric emptying for the rice as well as the dal; and the combination lifts the meal's protein from about 4 g to 11 g a portion, which is the second lever on the same glucose curve. Mohan's fifty grams, made unavoidable.
Sourcing note
Moong dal is in every shop that sells lentils, often as "yellow split mung" or "moong dal (split, skinless)". Dry-roasting it for 3–4 minutes before rinsing improves the dish considerably and is worth the trouble; some Indian shops sell it pre-roasted for exactly this purpose. Ash gourd is winter melon or wax gourd in Chinese and Southeast Asian grocers, where it is usually cheaper and fresher than in Indian ones, and is sold cut by the wedge — buy 150 g and use it the same day. If there is none, use 150 g of courgette, added 5 minutes later than the ash gourd would be, or 150 g of bottle gourd.
If you are watching…
Blood sugar: this is the dish in the chapter built for you. Each portion carries 25 g of dry moong dal, which is about 65 g cooked — above the 50 g of legumes that, eaten with brown rice, produced the 22.9% reduction in glycaemic area under the curve against white rice in overweight Asian Indians — 19.8% of which the brown rice managed on its own (Mohan et al., 2014) — plus 7.9 g of fibre and 11.1 g of protein. The rice is still 40 g dry a head, which is the quarter-plate. Nothing here is a claim about disease; it is a plate assembled the way the trial assembled it.
Blood pressure: 240 mg per portion. Because the dish is soft and soupy it reads as under-seasoned at low salt, so lean on the pepper, the lime and the ginger rather than the salt cellar — this is exactly the substitution Chapter 10 is about.
Cholesterol: 5.0 g of saturated fat per portion, from 12 g of coconut oil and 25 g of grated coconut for four. Swap the oil for gingelly and it drops to about 3.9 g; drop the grated coconut too and you are at about 1.5 g, and you have lost 1 g of fibre and most of the dish's character. The coconut is worth keeping.
Swap it
Moong dal → 100 g toor dal. Needs 30–35 minutes rather than 22–25, and gives an earthier, heavier pot. Or 100 g vanpayar, soaked overnight, for the most Kerala version of all, and 45 minutes.
Matta → white raw rice. Cooks in 15 minutes, so add the dal 8 minutes ahead of it, and you give up the thiamine and the bite.
Ash gourd → 150 g courgette, bottle gourd, chayote or snake gourd. All are 12–20 kcal per 100 g and all behave similarly; snake gourd is the lowest at 12 kcal and 1.27 g of available carbohydrate.
Add 100 g chopped cheera or spinach at step 11 → 30 kcal a portion, another 1 g of fibre, and iron. This is the easiest genuine upgrade in the recipe.
Scale it
Water scales sub-linearly. Check consistency at 20 minutes and add boiling water rather than trusting the table, because ash gourd's own water content varies a great deal.
Make ahead · store · freeze
This is the most batch-friendly dish in the chapter. Fridge 3 days, chilled within 1 hour in shallow containers. Freeze 2 months in 290 g portions — it freezes better than plain rice because the dal holds the moisture. Reheat once, with 60–80 ml of water per portion, to a full simmer, 4–5 minutes; it thickens hard in the fridge and needs the water.
Leftovers
Thin cold khichdi with water and buttermilk into a kanji, or press it into patties, dust them with rice flour and pan-fry in a teaspoon of oil for a very good tea-time cutlet.
Troubleshooting
Dry and stodgy: not enough water, or cooked too long uncovered. This dish should be loose enough to fall off a spoon; add boiling water freely.
Dal cooked, rice still hard: matta needs more time than moong. If it happens repeatedly, soak the rice 30 minutes and add the dal 8 minutes into the cooking.
Bitter, dull colour: the turmeric cooked too long at step 5. Twenty to thirty seconds, then the tomato goes in.
Tastes flat despite the salt: it needs acid, not more salt. The lime at the end is doing real seasoning work — add the other half.
Serve with
R087 Moru Kachiyathu · R084 Ulli Theeyal · a lime pickle from Chapter 23 · M07 the 70:30 salt
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