Add Flair And Flavor To Your Diet With Idli

If you follow the trail of Lean Cuisine, Jenny Craig and other prepackaged diet foods, it probably leads to weight rebound. Spice up your diet and increase your odds of keeping the weight off by adding idli, a simple rice and lentil batter dish, to the mix.

Variety of idli

Instead of microwaving a frozen reduced-calorie dinner, serve up a delicious low-fat variety of steamed idlis. Although idli has been around for more than a century, the modern version of the fluffy rice patties could satisfy the most sophisticated palate. It is a common breakfast meal for people living in South India, but it is also popular as a snack and for dinner.

One idli dish you might want to try is called khotu. To make khotu you place an idli in a Indian Idli triangular cup made of jackfruit leaves. You may want to serve coconut chutney with idli, but forgo the butter if you are trying to lose weight.

Another popular version of idli is called mudho, which is idli wrapped in a banana leaf.

You can also serve idli with tangy cucumber sauce.

Watching your weight with idli

Idli is an ideal diet food because on average a serving of idli has 80 calories, 3 grams of protein, 2 grams of fiber and 15 grams of carbohydrate. You could eat three large idlis, about 100 grams, for about 125 calories.

One of the reasons you can lose weight by eating idli is due to the fact they contain a combination of rice and lentils, which provide essential amino acids in a vegetarian meal. The combination provides your body with a vegetarian source of protein.

Make idli at home

You don't have to travel to India to experience the soft, fluffy circular idlis made out of rice and lentil batter.

To make idli, steam the batter made of black lentils and rice. Use a mold to make the idli into patties that turn out to be about three inches in diameter. Follow your favorite recipe or experiment with ones you find on the Internet.

The most traditional recipe for idli calls for skinless urad (1 cup), yogurt (1/2 cup), salt (1/2 tsp.), short grain rice (3 cups), fenugreek seeds (1 tsp.), baking powder (1 tsp.) and spring water (5 cups).

To prepare the dish, place urad dal with 2 ½ cups spring water in a pan uncovered for 10 hours.

After washing the rice, put the rice in a pan with 2 ½ cups of water. Stir in salt and fenugreek seeds. Soak for 10 hours. Next, grind the urad dal until fine and the rice until coarse before mixing them together. Ferment the mixture at 90 degrees F for 10 hours. Fold the yogurt and baking powdering to the batter. Lightly grease the idli pans before pouring in the batter. Steam cook for 21 minutes.

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