As I have mentioned in several food posts of mine, I love Kerala food. In order of favourites, #1 is Appam and stew, #2 is Puttu and banana and #3 is String hoppers or Idiyappam. When I still had the microwave, I had found a easy way to make them – A non-Mallu innovating on Idiyappam.
A few days back my school friend Rose had posted about the idiyappams that she had made on our WhatsApp group. I immediately asked her for the method and realised that I was missing a key element in the process. The secret to making the string hoppers easily is to semi cook the batter or use dry rice flour and mix it in piping hot water (the OPOS autolysis method) and extrude the string hoppers into trays and then steam them.
I was doing it the hard way. I was cooking the batter as idlis or the rice flour mix rolled into balls, fully. While the fully cooked idlis or rice balls were piping hot, the extrusion of the Idiyappams was easy. The minute the dough got cold, it would be painful to extrude them. I would simply use a disc with larger holes !!
Yesterday, I half cooked the batter that Amma had made and extruded the string hoppers onto idli plates. Steamed them for 6 minutes and got amazing Idiyappams. The best idiyappams that I have ever eaten were in Thekkady. The Thekkady diary.
The video that Rose had shared with me is the following one –
Enjoy making string hoppers at home and experiment with different kinds of flour – ragi, jowar etc all make for delicious string hoppers !!