Rice Flour - Basics

Rice Flour - Basics

Rice flour - is a versatile ingredient in South Indian pantries. Most of the traditional recipes calls for the rice flour. Sweets such as.. adirasam or kozhukattais, or snacks such as murukkus or thattai, or breakfast such as iddiyappam or puttu.. rice flour.. rules!

Home made Rice Flour

When I talk about how to prepare rice flour for cooking, I do not forget the traditional practice of using unprocessed rice flours to put kolam in South Indian houses. This practice has almost disappeared. But I still see some people (including me) sticking with putting the maa kolam during festivals. 

To master the traditional recipes, one should also follow the traditional way of making rice flour along with the other tips and tricks of the consistency of the dish. Soaking, drying, manual pounding the rice, sieving, dry roasting the flour, etc., were the steps in making rice flour in those days. Now, the hand pounding task is saved by the flour mills and mixers. 

Rice

• Regular raw rice can be used to make the rice flour. 
• Special flour rice or maavu arisi  or IR20 variety rice is sold in the shops. This is cheaper than raw rice and hence can be used for grinding rice flour.
• Even the raw rice given in government ration shop also can be cleaned and used to make flour. 

How to make rice flour at home:

• Wash and soak the required amount of rice in water for at least 1 hour. 
• Then, drain the water and spread it on a clean cloth (like old white cotton dhothi) to dry under fan for 30 mins or so. (not sun dry)

• The rice should dry only 75%. That is, when we hold the rice tightly in our fist and release there should be some rice stuck to our palm without wetness, and the rest should fall off.
• Now grind this in a mixer and sieve it. If you are doing it in big batch, you can give it in a flour mill and make fine powder. This is always best and easy.
• After making powder, sieve it.

• Now dry roast it in a pan. This is to make sure that the rice flour is completely free from moisture. 

Dry roasting the rice flour after sieving

• Now the rice flour is ready to be used instantly or can also be stored. It will remain fresh for 2 months on shelf. 
• If the rice flour is stored in fridge, it will remain good for 5 to 6 months too.

Thus, the versatile rice flour is ready to be used for any sweet or savoury or even a light tiffin.

Happy cooking !!