Make snacking healthy with millets - The New Indian Express

Express News Service

HYDERABAD:  While we tell ourselves that ‘you live only once’, why not give healthy snacking a true shot for the same reason. It’s not that bad, especially when we have exclusive millet restaurants and a startup in the city dishing out some scrumptious grub from this oh-so-healthy wholegrain.

Millet bowl, a city-based startup that sells readymade or instant millet snacks and beverages in collaboration with Nestle R&D, has upped the healthy snacking game with some innovative products. KR Sanjay Kumar, the founder, says, “Today, we witness a growing demand for healthier, transparently sourced and produced sustainable foods for both the ageing population and millennials. Addressing the multiple nutrition insufficiencies, with people not getting enough time from their hectic schedules to prepare a healthy meal, we aim at filling the gap by providing affordable and convenient products.

Actor Rakul Preet had recently
uploaded a photo on Instagram of she
having a plate of Barnyard millet dosa

The idea is to use the superpower of millets from their agricultural perspective and for health benefits.” The startup provides a variety of snacks, including a flavoured protein shake and Soupy Khichidi made of millets. Hyderabad also has exclusive millet restaurants, where one will not be able to tell the difference between a dish made of millets and a regular one. Millet Marvel in Film Nagar has been promoting millets as an alternative to rice and wheat. Founded by Dr Bharath Reddy, cardiologist and actor, it serves millet onion rings, millet biryani, millet sambar and everything else made of the wholegrain.

They are soon going to start a factory in association with the Indian Institute of Millets Research (IIMR), where they will manufacture millet noodles, batter, roti and snacks. “We put the word millets in the restaurant’s name as we want people to know that they are eating millets when they step into our outlet. We want to increase the awareness around the benefits of millets. Giving something worthwhile back to society is the aim behind starting this restaurant. If you continue eating polished white rice and wheat, you’ll end up taking medication from the early age of 35- 40,” says Dr Bharath. He says 2023 will be marked as the International Millet Year.

“We are the first Indian platform to have a cloud kitchen format with ready-to-cook meals. We use rice bran oil, don’t use processed salt or sugar, keep away from veggies grown using chemicals and pesticides, and are trying to keep it natural. We also launched a millet kitchen at Apollo Hospital in Jubilee Hills on Thursday, a one-of-a-kind by a hospital which serves in-patient attendants,” shares Dr Bharath, who along with a few franchises approaching him, plans to take this pan-India.

House of Millets, another exclusive millet food restaurant in Sainikpuri, has a ‘7 days 7 millets’ theme, where they serve food based on the theme of the day. “Every day, there is a different type of millet used in the breakfast, lunch and dinner spreads. For instance, on Monday, we make food made of jowar. When it comes to the curries, we don’t use onion or tomato paste. Instead, we use cashew paste and, when needed, watermelon paste,” says Prabhakar Rao, the founder.

Millet onion pakodas

Ingredients
1/3 cup mixed millet flour | 1/3 cup
gram flour | 1/2 tbsp rice flour |
2-3 big onions | 1/2 tsp red chilli
powder | 2 pinches of hing | 1-2
finely chopped green chillies
Curry leaves | Coriander leaves
Mint leaves | 1/2 inch ginger | 1
tbsp hot oil | 1/2 tsp ghee | 1 1/2
tbsp water | Salt to taste | Cooking
oil to deep fry

Method

• Grind a cup of millets to a fine flour
• Sift it. Mix in rava and maida
• Peel the onions and slice them thin. Finely chop green chillies, curry leaves and coriander leaves.
• Next add all the chopped
  ingredients to the flour along with salt and ginger. Knead into a staff dough by adding water in installments. Taste and adjust the salt/spices at this stage
• Heat oil, fry the millet onion pakodas till they turn brown
• Dry them off on tissue paper

— Sandhria Thomas, passionate baker

Millet uttapam/ dosa

Ingredients
1 cup urad dal | 2 1/2 cups
millets (Can be any kind:
Ragi, Kakum/Kangni,
Jowar, Bajra, Kuttu,
Rajgira/Ramdana/Chola,
Moraiyo/Kutki/Shavan/
Sama or Barnyard Millet)

Method

• Wash and soak Urad Dal and your choice of millets or mixed millets for 7-8 hours. Grind them all into a fine batter
• Add ½ tsp salt
• Leave it overnight to ferment
• Heat a dosa pan, drizzle some oil and spread a ladle full of batter on it
• Spread it out for a paper-thin dosa
• Enjoy with your favorite chutney
• For Uttapam:
• Spread two ladles of batter on the heated pan Spread it out thick
• Spinkle finely chopped onion, capsicum, carrot, ginger, green chillies and cumin
• Enjoy with your favorite chutney

— Lavanya Dutt, artist

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