Rude Food by Vir Sanghvi: Don’t fluff with idli

Well, fair enough. I am an idli lover myself, so I don’t agree. But I am not surprised he feels that way. Each time I post a picture of the idlis I enjoy for breakfast, I get bemused responses from many north Indians who cannot figure out why anyone would like idlis so much.

In Anderson’s case, his preference may have got unnoticed, but the organisation that sent out the questionnaire pulled out his dissing of the idli and posted it on X. After which, it was open season on the poor man as idli fans (mostly south Indians) attacked him and his food preferences.

The coup de grace came when Shashi Tharoor, an idli lover and a proud Malayali, joined the debate. (To the extent that it was a debate and not just a lynch mob.) “Poor soul has clearly never had a good one,” Tharoor posted to his 8.4 million followers before getting lyrical: “A truly great idli is a cloud, a whisper, a perfect dream of the perfectibility of human civilisation. It’s a sublime creation, a delicate, weightless morsel of rice and lentil, steamed to an ethereal fluffiness that melts on the tongue.”

Whew! I don’t think any opposing view could stand up to Tharoor’s eloquence.

Anderson responded that he had learnt his lesson: It did not pay to anger South Indians when it came to food. But, he pointed out, he liked most South Indian dishes. His comments about the idli needed to be taken in that context. He just preferred an appam to an idli.

But by then not many people were listening. They had avenged their beloved idli and had no interest in any defense offered by the abuser.

I am on Tharoor’s side on this one, but now that the idli has got our attention, it may be time to ask some questions about it.

First of all, despite all this stuff about South Indian pride, is it really a South Indian invention?

It would be a stupid question, except that the late KT Achaya, the respected food historian (and as proud a South Indian as Tharoor), wrote that the idli is an adaptation of an Indonesian dish called the kedli.

Achaya was known for ascribing South Indian origins to nearly every dish, so his it-came-from-Indonesia position was out of character. Seven years ago, I wrote about Achaya’s claim and, taking my courage in my hands, cast doubt on the great man’s claim. There is no dish in Indonesia (at least in mainstream cuisine) called kedli. Nor does it seem likely that such a dish existed. No historical record has been found. Moreover Achaya cited no evidence or sources for his claim.

Later, I recognised that even the Indonesian stuff was actually an expression of South Indian pride. Many South Indians resent the fact that history books play down the achievements of such South Indian dynasties as the Cholas, who dominated parts of South East Asia and won military victories there. The Indonesian connection emphasises the triumphs of the Cholas and the close links they had with that part of Asia.

When I first wrote about the lack of evidence for Achaya’s claim, I spoke to the chef and food historian Shri Bala, who specialises in Sangam literature. Shri Bala did not rule out an Indonesian connection. She said that the earliest references to idli-like dishes date back to the 10th century, which is when Chola power in South East Asia was at its height. She did not believe that idlis were brought from Indonesia but she thought it possible that the fermentation techniques used in making idlis had South East Asian roots.

As the idli became the subject of a social media storm, I called Shri Bala again. She had not changed her mind, she said, the idli was invented in India. The only thing she had now recognised was that not all of the links between the Chola kingdom and South East Asia were through the seas. The land route was also used, and she was open to the possibility that some of the rice varieties popular in that period came from Assam, which was a stop on the route.

Shri Bala talked about the idli as though it was a Tamil dish. In fact, you find it all over South India and the people who took it all over India in the 20th Century were cooks and restaurateurs from Karnataka.

She conceded that much, but insisted that it was created by the Tamil-speaking Chola kingdom and only reached Karnataka during the Vijaynagar dynasty, which had its capital in Hampi, not far from Bengaluru.

That left just one unanswered question: Why do idlis vary so much in quality? Outside of South India, they can be dense and lack the ethereal fluffiness that Tharoor raved about.

Shri Bala thought it had something to do with the quality of ingredients. Many restaurants do not use the right variety of rice or grind it correctly. Some places even use broken rice, she said.

Is that necessarily true of five-star hotels? They can pay for the best ingredients, but the idlis are often rubbish. The only chain that consistently gets it right is ITC, so I asked Manisha Bhasin, the group’s corporate chef, what the secret was.

Manisha agreed that ingredients were the key, but said that the fermentation was as important. The only way to get an idli to achieve the right level of fluffiness was to let the internal gases rise during that fermentation process.

After the ground rice and dal had been mixed you needed to leave the dough (or batter, if you prefer that term) out at room temperature for the right amount of time so that the fermentation would progress. Most chefs will tell you that the bacteria required for this process come from the dal, but I suspect that the dough also picks up airborne bacteria.

Once it is fermented, the dough has to be refrigerated for a set period of time. Then it must be allowed to return to room temperature before the steaming can begin.

There is a well documented method for all this in ITC, but no two rooms, no two temperatures and no two bacterial environments are exactly the same. So, only an experienced chef can judge the precise timing for each part of the process using his or her judgement, each time the dough is fermented.

Most five-star hotels hire chefs whose sole job is the South Indian breakfast process; who arrive early each morning and leave by the afternoon. But ITC makes a point of training them until they have got it right. Many other hotels don’t bother, and that’s why five-star idlis can often be so overpriced and horrible.

As Shri Bala says, a good idli chef is like a master baker. But while bakers can make fortunes, the poor idli chefs remain the forgotten heroes of the kitchen, underpaid and unknown. May be it’s time to change all that.

From HT Brunch, October 18, 2025

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