Appam / Fermented Rice Pancake / Vellayappam
Kerala Appam made with raw rice, coconut, and yeast. This fermented rice pancakes are one of the popular dishes from Kerala. They are gluten free and vegan
Servings: 10 people
Ingredients
- 2 cups Raw rice (pachari)
- 1.5 cups Fresh Grated Coconut
- ¼ cup cooked Matta rice (Kerala Red rice)
- 1 small Garlic clove, peeled
- 2 tsp Cumin seed
- Water as needed
- ½ tsp Active Dry Yeast
- 1 tbsp Sugar (optional)
- Salt to taste
Instructions
- Wash the raw rice and soak for 6-8 hours.
- Grind the rice with all other ingredients to make a smooth batter. The batter should be free flowing but not too much watery.
- Transfer the batter to a large bowl, cover with a lid and ferment for 8 hours or overnight.
- The fermented batter will rise. Give it a mix. Check for the salt before cooking. Add more if needed.
- Now heat a non stick flat pan or tawa. Keep the heat on medium-low. Once the pan is hot, pour a ladle of batter into the pan. Spread the batter slightly to make a small circular shape. Don't spread too much. You can see small holes starting to appear.
- Cover it with a lid and cook for 1 minute. In between check whether the appam is cooked.
- When cooked, take it from the pan using a spatula and place it on a plate. Repeat to make more appam with the rest of the batter.
- Serve and enjoy with your favorite side dish.
Notes
- You can grind the yeast along with other ingredients. No need for proofing. But you must be sure that the yeast will work.
- The process will take 6-8 hours of soaking time and 8 hours of fermentation. So better soak the rice during day time and ferment overnight.
- Don't add too much water while grinding. Add water just to grind the rice and add rest of the water later to make a free flowing batter. The batter must not be very thick.
- If the batter is very thick, appam will be a little hard. For soft appam, the batter should be thin but not watery.
- Keep the batter in a large bowl for fermentation as the batter will rise and there is a chance of over flow of the batter.
- The fermentation time depends on the weather in which you are living. Hot climate makes the fermentation faster and cold weather makes it slow.
- Sugar is an optional ingredient. Avoid or adjust it according to taste.
- In some places, the appam is flipped to other side while cooking. But since we cook it covered, both sides will be perfectly cooked. So it's not important to flip. But if you want, you can do that.