Kodo Idly-Inside Out

Idly is a traditional fermented food of South Indian Cuisine. It is appreciated for its spongy texture, attractive appearance, appetizing taste and flavor, together with its easy digestibility and good nutritive value. The general practice to prepare idly is to soak the parboiled milled rice grains and decorticated whole black gram for 6 to 8h, drain the water, wet grind it with adequate quantity of water and keep for fermentation overnight with the addition of 1% salt. The system is followed conventionally with little or poor scientific support. The current study focuses on the possibility of incorporating kodo millet instead of plain rice, in our regular diet and optimising the process variables. Kodo millet was used to make idly, in different proportions with blackgram such as 2: 1, 2.5: 1, 3: 1, 3.5: 1 and 4: 1 and their flow properties, texture and overall acceptability was examined. Batter was found to be pseudoplastic at different blend ratios and fermentation times and followed the power law. Consistency index showed an increasing trend with fermentation time and the flow behaviour index registered a reverse trend. The pattern was similar in all the ratios analysed. Overall acceptability of the kodo millet idly was closer to the regular idly. Models to predict the texture and colour in relation to the ratio of kodo millet to blackgram was obtained using regression analysis.