Hello, I am not from south India, but used to eat a lot of idli/dosa for breakfast or dinner few years back. I used to soak everything from scratch and grind and make the batter every weekend and was using whatever regular rice I had at home... sometimes even basmati rice. For last few months, have gotten extremely busy with work and hence leaning towards junk food which is affecting my health a lot. I am planning to buy all the lentils and stuff and make pre-mixes for idli/dosa, so it's faster for me and I can get back to eating it frequently. This time I am planning to get idli/par-boiled rice from Indian store (am in US) for idli pre-mix. Does par-boiled rice/idli rice work for dosa as well? Any other pre-mixes that you could think of that could keep me on healthier track? So far I could find idli (can make appe and uttappam as well), dosa, upma, dhokla and sambhar pre-mixes. Thanks in advance!
Idli rice(par boiled rice) will work equally well for dosa too. However for really crisp dosas, you can use a proportion of 3:1 idli rice to sona masuri rice with 1 part of le methi added for flavour. You can also have pre mixes of rava idli, rava dosa , pongal mix in addition to the items already mentioned by you.
Conventional or traditional dosa is ok from health point of view. But in south India and the world over is crazy about millets as it is considered low on glycemic index and better by weight and health conscious folks. U Tube is flooded with millets and lentils use in making crisp dosas. One such For your consideration is One can make quick dosas by using a mix of chopped murngai leaves and grated coconut in a rice dough.
I have made foxtail millet idli's in past couple of times. It turned out well. However we are moving into summer season and I thought millets might be hot for the body, so I thought of not doing pre-mix for millets. Some of the pre-mixes I was thinking was of regular idli/dosa, rava idli/dosa, barley idli dosa, mixed dal, moong bean/dal (pesarattu). I can also make appam/appe (sorry not sure what's it called exactly since I have heard both the names ).
When there was only rice & coconut available during this lockdown due to covid19, my spouse prepared adadosa with dough coarse ground of soaked rice mixed with grated coconut. Luckily for us, my daughter called on with murungakeerai which was cleaned and chopped added to dough of rice and mixed with coconut gratings. On hot thava one ladle dough mix transferred flattened to a small round for first with thought of Lord Ganesha. gingiley or coconut oil drops gently filled around periphery & into a tiny hole at the centre of the disc while it is wet. This would ensure oil spread evenly and render it crispy. Flip carefully and cook the other side for just 2 minutes. For one minute keep the flame high and then reduce it to sim. Nostrils too would sense the degree of readiness to flip and take it off thava. Nice crisp on one side Ada dosa - is ready.
This looks yummy! I never had moringa leaves or murungakeerai. Will have to find it here in US. Grated coconut in the batter is also a good idea. There was a time when I was all about coconut oil for better hair and skin and also drinking coconut water and then with increasing workload everything went to back burner. I have some chopped frozen methi leaves which I freezed to make curries in winter, but couldn't use it all. Was planning to add that to the batter.