Rava Upma (A South Indian Breakfast)

Upma is (pronounced: oo-pa-mav) a typical South Indian breakfast. It’s made of wheat semolina, very similar to cream of wheat but more finely ground. In some parts of South India, they use a coarser ground semolina but for this recipe, we’ll stick with the fine ground semolina. This is one of the breakfast dishes we ate growing up so naturally, I learned this by watching my mama. The downfall is that she never used measurements. It was always a pinch of this and a bit of that so everything listed below is just an approximate measurement based on yours truly trying to ‘eye-ball’ it. LOL. 

Ingredients:

1 cup of semolina

1/2-1 tb. oil

1 tsp mustard seeds

2-3 cups boiled water (we’ll talk about this in the directions)

 3 tb. of minced onion

2 dried red chilies

1 sprig of curry leaves (optional)

1/8 tsp. ground turmeric

Salt to taste

1 tsp minced fresh ginger

Optional: 

Cashews

Raisins

1/4 cup chopped tomato

1-2 tsp Chana/urad dal

Directions: 

1. Dry roast the semolina on medium heat until fragrant and golden brown. Put it aside. 
2. In a skillet, add oil.
3. To the oil, add mustard seeds and let it splutter.
4. Add onions, red chilies, curry leaves, ginger and any (or all) of the optional ingredients. 
5. Saute until lightly browned. 
6. Add water (start with just 2 cups) & turmeric.
7. Once water comes to a gentle boil, add the semolina quickly and mix it in. Here’s the tricky part…ALL the semolina needs to get wet but not so wet to where it’s drowning. Just wet enough to cook through. You’ll need to add water until there’s no semolina that is left dry. 
8. Turn heat to low and cover until the water evaporates (it will only take a few minutes so be sure to watch it). 
9. Fluff with a fork and serve with a ripe banana. 

My hubby eats this with just sugar on top but most people eat this by smashing some banana in it – YUM!

Notes:

• Our son has a nut allergy so we omit the cashews. If you want the crunch but have nut allergies, try the chana/urad dal or even some pine nuts. 
• We also omit the raisins since our family doesn’t care for raisins in our food. My mother-in-law has even tried this with dried cranberries when our pantry didn’t have raisins. 
• To add more of a kick, try frying with some chopped up green chilies. The spicy and sweet combo with the banana is lovely.