R063Cabbage Thoran
The master thoran: shredded cabbage, crushed coconut, turmeric
Recipes › Vegetables: The Half of the Plate
R079
Cabbage and Carrot Upperi
The everyday household upperi, with a little coconut and a urad dal tempering
Photograph: Adobe Stock · representative of the dish
The re-engineeringTen grams of oil rather than 25 g, and 40 g of coconut rather than 100 g, which is what makes this the lightest coconut dish in the chapter at 111 kcal a serving.
A word about the name, because it confuses everybody. On a sadya leaf, upperi means the deep-fried salted banana chip. In everyday household speech it means a dry-cooked vegetable side, close to a mezhukkupuratti and sometimes close to a thoran. Both are correct, and this is the second sense: cabbage and carrot cut fine, a small quantity of coconut, and a tempering with urad dal in it, which gives the dish a nuttiness and a faint crunch that a plain thoran does not have. It is the most-cooked vegetable dish in Kerala kitchens after the cabbage thoran, and it deserves to be.
Before you start: Cut the carrot finer than the cabbage — 3 mm matchsticks or coarse grating — because carrot takes about three minutes longer than shredded cabbage and the two need to finish together.
Cabbage and Carrot Upperi
Active 20 minutes Total 30 minutes
Scale
4 servings
Ingredients — tap to tick off
- ✓10 g (2 tsp) coconut oil
- ✓2 g (½ tsp) mustard seed
- ✓3 g (¾ tsp) black gram dal (urad dal)
- ✓2 g (1 sprig) curry leaves
- ✓40 g (about 4) shallots, thinly sliced
- ✓8 g (1–2) green chillies, slit
- ✓200 g (about 2) carrots, cut into 3 mm matchsticks
- ✓350 g (about 5 cups, shredded) cabbage, shredded 3–4 mm
- ✓1.5 g (¼ tsp) ground turmeric
- ✓2 g (½ tsp) salt, or M07
- ✓40 g (½ cup) freshly grated coconut
Allergens: Mustard.
Equipment: Wide pan, 26 cm, with a lid; chattuvam. Substitute: any wide pan and a wooden spatula.
Per serving (estimated)
| Energy | 111 kcal |
| Protein | 2.6 g |
| Fibre | 5.2 g |
| Net carbohydrate | 9.1 g |
| Total carbohydrate | 14.3 g |
| Sugars | 6.7 g |
| Fat | 7.1 g |
| Saturated fat | 5.8 g |
| Sodium | 250 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
- Heat the pan , add the oil, and swirl to a film. Pop the mustard seed, 20–30 seconds, until the sound subsides.
- Add the urad dal and fry until it turns the colour of weak tea, 30–45 seconds. It goes from nutty to burnt quickly, so watch it rather than the clock.
- Add the curry leaves for 5–10 seconds, then the shallots and green chilli, and cook until the shallots soften, .
- Add the carrot, turmeric and salt, and cook uncovered .
- Add the cabbage, toss to combine, cover and cook on a medium flame, stirring twice, until both vegetables are tender with bite and the carrot has lost its raw snap, .
- Uncover, dry the pan off if there is liquid, , then fold in the coconut and cook more, just until warmed through.
Why this worksThe urad dal is doing two jobs no other ingredient here does. Fried in oil it develops Maillard products that read as savoury and cooked, which is why this dish tastes better seasoned than its 2 g of salt should allow; and it stays firm, so the finished upperi has a textural contrast that a thoran does not. Texture is one of the five levers that let a dish carry less salt.
Sourcing note
Both vegetables are in every supermarket in the world, which makes this the recipe to give a reader who has just moved abroad and cannot find anything else. Bagged coleslaw mix — shredded cabbage and carrot, no dressing — is a legitimate shortcut at 550 g and saves fifteen minutes, and no one will know. Avoid anything with mayonnaise or vinegar in the bag.
If you are watching…
Blood sugar: 9.1 g net carbohydrate per serving, of which 6.7 g is sugar, most of it the carrot's. Still low in absolute terms; a 130 g serving costs 111 kcal.
Blood pressure: 250 mg sodium, or about 190 mg with M07. About 35 mg of it is the carrot's own sodium, which is unusually high for a vegetable.
Cholesterol: 5.8 g saturated fat, the lowest of any coconut dish in this chapter, because there is only 40 g of coconut in it.
Swap it
Carrot → 200 g French beans or 200 g finely diced capsicum. Sugars fall about 2 g per serving with beans.
Urad dal → 5 g roasted peanuts, crushed, added at the end. Similar textural job, more fat, and it stops being a Kerala tempering. (Allergen: this swap introduces peanuts.)
Cabbage → 350 g shredded Brussels sprouts. Unexpected, entirely successful, and slightly more bitter.
Add 100 g cooked kadala at step 6 → protein up about 3 g and 6 g more fibre per serving, since black chickpea is the highest-fibre pulse in the Kerala repertoire at 25.2 g per 100 g.
Make ahead · store · freeze
Cut both vegetables up to 2 days ahead. Fridge 3 days cooked. Freeze 1 month, watery on thawing. Reheat dry, 3–4 minutes.
Leftovers
The best sandwich and wrap filling in this book, cold, with a spoon of curd. It also goes into an omelette or a dosa well, and it is the standard lunchbox vegetable in a great many Kerala households for good reason.
Troubleshooting
Carrot still hard, cabbage collapsed: the carrot was cut too thick or added at the same time. Three millimetres, three minutes' head start.
Bitter tempering: the urad dal burnt. It takes forty seconds, not two minutes.
Wet: the lid stayed on too long. Uncover and cook it dry over a higher flame.
Serve with
R015 Matta Rice · R058 Parippu Curry · R070 Kalan · R107 Sambharam
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