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Millet is an excellent grain to incorporate into your diet if you've been looking for ways to improve your health through the foods you eat. Millets are one of the world's oldest cultivated grains and are widely consumed in every region. More and more people are becoming aware of the great nutritional potential of millets since 2023 is widely recognized as the year of millets. The great thing about millets is that there are so many different kinds and they're so simple to prepare that you'll never get tired of eating them. Whether you choose pearl, finger, proso, or sorghum, you won't be doing your body any harm by making any of those choices. But are you sure you're consuming millets properly?
In an Instagram post Food Consultant, Sangeeta Khanna shared why dosa is a great way to use millet in our everyday meals. She says, “Millets need prolonged soaking to be able to deliver the desired nutrition and fermentation helps breaking down the nutrients even further, making the millet meals easily digestible and readily absorbable. The partially broken-down fiber present in the grains and lentils are great prebiotics and help the gut microbiome do what it’s meant for. Just make sure your batter doesn’t over ferment and become sour for making your dosas and idlis.”
Millet Dosa Recipe
She suggests, use a ratio of 1:1:1 of rice to urad dal to millet for a versatile dosa idli batter that works with any millet. Dosas can be made with any kind of millet or rice and any kind of lentil (toor dal, urad dal, etc.) would work just fine. When making dosa or idli, a wet grinder is essential for producing a smooth, fermentable batter. If you mill the urad dal separately, the slow process will whip in some air.
Quick Tip
Sangeets says, “If you don’t have a wet grinder or no bandwidth to accommodate this process, a regular mixie works very well and even if that’s cumbersome, you can get dry millets, rice and lentil mix milled in a chakki and keep the mixed flour handy. I have done this a few times when needed and the result is decent if not comparable to wet grinder method. Adding sourdough starter to the batter helps a lot in better fermentation (with the help of selective flora of microbes) and the flavour speaks for itself.”
Adding an egg on top of these basic meals and presenting them with chutneys and pickles of choice is a great way to up the protein content without much effort.
How to Eat
The precise preparation of millet meals is essential if you want to get the most out of your meal. When cooking with millets, it's important to remember the following.
Millets must be soaked for at least six to eight hours before they can be cooked. The cooking time of the grain can be cut in half just by soaking it first.
Do not eat too many servings of any kind of millets. You only need to eat them once to gain the nutritional benefits. Keep in mind that there may be negative repercussions from eating too much of it.
Avoid millet products that have been processed, since this is the case with any refined flour. The nutrients in whole grain are lost in processing. Consumption of refined millets serves no use. Use homemade flour that you've milled yourself or more whole grains.
Take it slow; don't try to do too much at once. Never eat any other millet when eating pearl millet, and never combine it with any other millet.
