Unlike the cuisine in North of India, the food of the South is predominated by rice as a primary ingredient – long, short, small, broken, flattened. This variety makes for some of the most healthy and interesting breakfast recipes, especially in Southern & Western India, particularly Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Gujarat and Maharashtra.

In Southern kitchens, upma as breakfast has an ubiquitous presence. Quick, easy, nutritious and filling, a stomach full of upma can sustain a person for several hours without getting hungry or craving for the next feed. Upma is usually made of coarsely ground rice or wheat (called semolina), enhanced with seasoning in ghee or oil (such as one described in 22) and a fair amount of vegetables such as beans, carrots, green peas, etc. Another popular breakfast, a standard fare particularly in the states of Gujarat and Maharashtra, is a variety of preparations made from flattened rice called Poha.

Preparation

The key aspect of breakfast food such as upma, poha, porridge is its quickness and ease of preparation – the whole process does not take more than 15 minutes, from start to finish. Hence, it is an ideal item to prepare when the number of people to feed is large or one is pressed for time.

Ingredients

As the recipes below will show, the basic ingredients are coarsely ground rice or wheat or flattened rice, seasoning with ghee and water as required. Nowadays, upma is also prepared using different kinds of millets, coarsely ground bajra, jowar, maize, etc.

Cracked Wheat Pan Upma

Ingredients:

Ghee – ½ palam

Cracked Wheat – ¼ padi

Sour Butter Milk – ⅜ padi

Powdered Salt – ¼ palam

For Seasoning:

Ghee – ⅛ palam

Red Chillies – ⅛ palam

Mustard – ¼ palam

Urad Dal/Black Gram – ¼ palam

Cumin Seeds – 1/16 palam

Curry Leaves – ⅛ palam

Asafoetida – veesam 1/16 r.e

Method:

1. Heat ghee in a pan and after it boils, add cracked wheat in it and fry well until golden brown. The aroma of the ghee should emerge out of the dish.

2. Add sour buttermilk. Put this in a lead coated vessel and add the fried cracked wheat in it. This vessel should be clean and rust-free.

3. Add powdered salt to it and mix well.

4. Heat ghee in a pan and add red chillies, mustard, urad dal, cumin seeds, curry leaves, asafoetida and refer to the 22nd recipe for seasoning.Set aside the asafoetida.

5. Pour the cracked wheat into the seasoning and stir well with an iron rod continuously so that it is cooked properly. The buttermilk used here should be sour and thick.

6. This dish should be eaten hot. If necessary grated coconut can be added to the butter milk and used.