R100Baked Ethakka Appam
Pazham pori out of the oven, and what that costs
R101
Ragi Banana Pancake
Finger millet, banana and no added sugar at all
Photograph: Adobe Stock · representative of the dish
Plan ahead: plus 15 minutes resting the batter — recommended.
The re-engineeringNo sugar and no jaggery — 200 g of ripe banana supplies all the sweetness the dish needs. Ragi replaces most of the flour, taking fibre from about 1 g to 5 g a serving, and the pan takes 8 g of oil across eight pancakes rather than the 30 g a batter this size usually gets.
Ragi is not a Kerala grain by inheritance so much as by adoption, and its honest advantages are two: about 11 g of fibre per 100 g against rice's 2.8 g, and a great deal of calcium. Its protein, at 7.2 g per 100 g, is actually lower than rice's. What it also has is a slightly bitter, malty flavour that ripe banana handles better than anything else, which is why this pairing turns up wherever ragi is eaten. Ten minutes of mixing, ten of cooking, and it holds a child through to dinner.
Before you start: Mash the banana thoroughly before the flour goes in. Lumps of banana in a ragi batter do not break up later, and they scorch on the pan.
Ragi Banana Pancake
Active 20 minutes Total 35 minutes
Scale
4 servings
Ingredients — tap to tick off
- ✓200 g (2 medium) ripe bananas, well mashed
- ✓150 ml whole milk
- ✓1 egg (about 50 g), lightly beaten
- ✓120 g (1 cup) ragi flour
- ✓30 g (3½ tbsp) rice flour
- ✓20 g (¼ cup) fresh grated coconut
- ✓3 g (½ tsp) ground cardamom
- ✓1 g (¼ tsp) salt
- ✓8 g (1½ tsp) sesame (gingelly) oil, for the pan
Allergens: Egg, milk, sesame.
Equipment: Heavy non-stick or well-seasoned cast-iron tawa, 20 cm; ladle. Substitute: an appachatti gives thicker, softer, bowl-shaped pancakes and takes a minute longer each.
Per serving (estimated)
| Energy | 261 kcal |
| Protein | 7 g |
| Fibre | 5 g |
| Net carbohydrate | 40 g |
| Total carbohydrate | 45 g |
| Sugars | 13 g |
| Fat | 8 g |
| Saturated fat | 4 g |
| Sodium | 130 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
- Mash the bananas to a smooth purée with a fork, . A few fibres are fine; lumps are not.
- Whisk in the milk and the egg until uniform.
- Fold in the ragi flour, rice flour, coconut, cardamom and salt, mixing only until no dry flour remains, 30–45 seconds. Over-mixing a millet batter makes it gluey.
- Rest the batter . Ragi absorbs water slowly, and a rested batter spreads evenly where a fresh one sits in a mound. It should fall from the ladle in a thick ribbon; add 20 ml more milk if it does not.
- Heat the tawa over medium heat until a drop of water flicked onto it dances rather than sits, . Brush with a scant teaspoon of the oil.
- Cook each pancake from a ladleful, spread to about 12 cm, until the surface has gone matt, bubbles have risen and burst across the whole face, and the edges lift when nudged, 2½–. Ragi will not colour like wheat, so judge by the surface rather than by the colour.
- Turn and cook a further 1½–, until the second side is set and freckled and the pancake feels springy rather than doughy in the middle.
- Stack the cooked pancakes under a cloth rather than on a rack; ragi pancakes stiffen as they cool and steam keeps them tender.
Why this worksRagi has no gluten, so there is no network to trap gas — the structure comes from egg protein setting and from the banana's pectin, which is why both are here and why the batter must not be beaten. The banana also supplies all the sugar, and that matters beyond the arithmetic: fruit sugars arrive with fibre attached, where 15 g of jaggery arrives with none.
Sourcing note
Buy ragi flour from a South Asian grocer rather than a health-food shop, where the same thing costs three times as much under the name "finger millet flour". It goes rancid faster than wheat flour because of its higher fat content, so buy small bags and keep them in the fridge. For the banana, ordinary ripe dessert bananas — poovam, robusta, or any Cavendish — are correct here; nendran is too dense. Ragi flour older than three months tastes noticeably bitter, and no amount of banana hides it.
If you are watching…
Blood sugar: 40 g of net carbohydrate a serving, which is not small — this is a substantial snack, closer to a light breakfast. Two points of honesty. Millet's glycaemic advantage belongs to the coarsely milled grain; finely milled millet flour cooked into a soft batter loses much of it, and one study of finger-millet formulations measured a glycaemic index of 93. And low-GI eating as a pattern delivers about 0.3–0.5% off HbA1c, which is larger than any spice in this book but is a pattern effect, not a property of this pancake. Eat one pancake with a boiled egg rather than two on their own.
Cholesterol: 4 g of saturated fat, mostly from the whole milk and the coconut. Semi-skimmed milk takes it to about 2.5 g.
Blood pressure: 130 mg a serving.
Swap it
No egg → 40 ml more milk plus 10 g more rice flour. Consequence: flatter, softer, more fragile to turn, and protein falls from 7 g to about 5 g a serving. The dish becomes vegetarian-to-vegan with a plant milk.
Buttermilk for the milk → Consequence: tangier and lighter, and the acid gives a slightly better rise. Sodium rises by about 40 mg a serving, because cultured buttermilk carries around 148 mg per 100 g before anything is added.
Half ragi, half wheat flour → Consequence: more familiar and easier to turn, and fibre falls from 5 g to about 3 g. (Allergen: this swap introduces gluten (wheat).)
Add 20 g of chopped roasted peanuts to the batter → Consequence: better texture and about 30 kcal more a serving. (Allergen: this swap introduces peanuts.)
Scale it
Oil does not scale linearly; a hot pan needs less per pancake as it goes on.
Make ahead · store · freeze
Batter keeps in the fridge 12 hours and thickens as it stands, so loosen it with 20–30 ml of milk before cooking. Cooked pancakes: fridge 2 days, freeze 2 months interleaved with parchment, reheated from frozen on a dry tawa for 2–3 minutes a side. Do not microwave them from frozen — they go leathery.
Leftovers
Cut cold pancakes into strips and eat them with curd and a spoonful of R098, which is better than it sounds. Or layer two with a spoonful of grated coconut between and warm them through on the tawa.
Troubleshooting
Gluey: the batter was over-mixed, or not rested.
Falling apart on the turn: too thin, or turned too early. Wait for the edges to lift by themselves.
Bitter: the ragi flour is old. There is no way to hide it.
Dense and heavy: the batter was too thick. It should ribbon off the ladle, not drop off it.
Serve with
R106 Chai · R107 Sambharam · R099 Carrot and Coconut Raita · a boiled egg, for the protein this dish is short of
Tap a star to rate this recipe
