This food experiment pits Idli, Dosas made with parboiled rice, and raw rice batter against each other

Team Udayavani, Dec 13, 2021, 12:24 PM IST

Food science appears to be a simple discipline, but it is just as significant as other fields of science. All of the food recipes we faithfully follow when preparing our favourite foods at home are the result of many hits and trials, as well as, more significantly, research.

Swetha Sivakumar, a culinary researcher and blogger, has made this concept abundantly clear. Swetha conducted a cooking experiment using the classic South Indian meals Idli and Dosa to demonstrate why recipes call for boiling the rice before preparing the batter.

She talked about her experiment on Twitter and on her blog, ‘Upgrade My Food.’ “Why do idli/dosa recipes always call for parboiled rice?” Swetha writes in the thread, explaining the basis of her investigation. What happens if we use raw rice to make idli and dosa batter? I conducted an experiment to find out.

Why do idli/dosa recipes always ask for parboiled rice? or idli rava (which is essentially parboiled grits)?

What happens if we makes idli, dosa batter with just raw rice?

To find out, I ran an experiment and here are the results: pic.twitter.com/XotvQoQt9Y

— Swetha Sivakumar (@Upgrade_My_Food) December 10, 2021

Swetha prepared two batters: one with urad dal and parboiled rice, and the other with urad dal and uncooked rice.

She utilised the exact same water ratios and mixing time for both batters and compared the texture before leaving them out in the sun for one day to start the fermentation process.

The Experiment:

Make 2 batters -> 1 made with urad dal + parboiled rice, the other with urad dal + raw rice.

Observe the differences in the resultant batter, idli and dosa made from these 2 types.

Step 1: Soak pic.twitter.com/VJjScIUs62

— Swetha Sivakumar (@Upgrade_My_Food) December 10, 2021

Despite grinding them for the exact same amount of time, notice how the raw rice batter is nice and smooth. The boiled rice batter texture feels gritty.

This is obviously due to the effect of the par-boiling process, which causes the starch in the rice to retrograde and harden. pic.twitter.com/J0o68oU8DV

— Swetha Sivakumar (@Upgrade_My_Food) December 10, 2021

Step 3: Ferment the batter
It was a warm, sunny day that day. So, I placed the batter in the patio and left it to ferment during the day. pic.twitter.com/WNDTj7Hb2p

— Swetha Sivakumar (@Upgrade_My_Food) December 10, 2021

She then looked at how the two batters differed in terms of fermentation. The parboiled rice batter fermented more quickly than the uncooked rice batter. Swetha adds that because parboiled rice has already been cooked a little, it gives the lactobacillus bacteria a leg up on the sugars in the rice. If the rice has already been boiled, it gives the bacteria a head start.

In the evening (about 10 hours later), I bought the batter inside, full of excitement, to see the state of the batters. I opened the lids to find this: pic.twitter.com/ugCDJCdn8V

— Swetha Sivakumar (@Upgrade_My_Food) December 10, 2021

The par boiled rice batter was well fermented, and bubbly. The raw rice batter was not showing much signs of fermentation, unfortunately. pic.twitter.com/GuOiHLs6JF

— Swetha Sivakumar (@Upgrade_My_Food) December 10, 2021

So, anyway, I thought “Oh well, I guess it is kind of hard to ferment raw rice…”. I left the raw rice batter out overnight and went to sleep.

To my surprise, the next day morning I woke up to find the raw rice batter fermented!! pic.twitter.com/9b1usV8hrk

— Swetha Sivakumar (@Upgrade_My_Food) December 10, 2021

So, it is possible to ferment raw rice batters, it just takes more time. Remember par boiled, as the name suggests, has been par cooked. That 1 extra step gives the lactobacillus bacteria the boost it needs to access to the sugars in the rice quickly.

— Swetha Sivakumar (@Upgrade_My_Food) December 10, 2021

Now that both batters were prepared, it was time to create idlis and dosas to observe how different the dishes would turn out. In comparison to the raw rice batter, the parboiled batter produced thicker idlis, indicating that it had’more lift.’ When it came to dosas, though, the raw rice batter triumphed. Swetha’s food experiment revealed that the uncooked rice batter dosa was crispier and tastier.

Step 4: Making the idlis

I measured out the exact same amount of batter and steamed the 2 types of batter side by side.

Here’s how they turned out:
See, how the parboiled rice is wider. This is because the batter had more rise, aka more lift compared to the raw rice batter. pic.twitter.com/KjWyGqaXFC

— Swetha Sivakumar (@Upgrade_My_Food) December 10, 2021

Here are the 2 dosas side by side:
While the boiled rice batter lifts off easily from the tava, the raw rice dosa was definitely tastier (had those wonderful crispy, jagged edges) than the parboiled rice batter dosa. pic.twitter.com/GLsvtYtREl

— Swetha Sivakumar (@Upgrade_My_Food) December 10, 2021

This cooking experiment demonstrated that using raw rice batter is not always a terrible idea. Rather, it can improve the flavour of your dosas, if not idlis.