Upma Recipe (South Indian Rava Upma)

Looking for a quick 20 minutes breakfast recipe for your busy weekdays? If Yes, then this South Indian Rava Upma recipe will be a keeper. Plus, it tastes too good with a cup of chai or coffee.

Traditional South Indian Upma Recipe

This authentic rava upma recipe is made from semolina (sooji or rava). And it has a light fluffy texture. It is usually served with chutney (mostly coconut chutney) and south Indian filter coffee. Or it can be enjoyed just plain or with a sprinkle of sev on top.

The different verity of upma recipes

• Oats upma  
• Quinoa upma  
• Bread upma  
• Semiya upma  
• Aval upma (poha upma)
• Tomato upma
• Vegetable upma
• Idli upma
• Dalia upma

Which type of rava is used for rava upma?

• To make rava upma, coarse semolina (sooji or rava) is used. There are two kinds of rava available in the market. One is fine verity also known as Bombay rava and second is coarse.
• You can use roasted rava which is easily available in the market. In this case, skip the roasting step and your upma will be ready in 10 minutes only.
• Or you can buy the regular unroasted verity and dry roast them at home. Let it cool down and store in the container. So whenever you want to make rava upma for breakfast, you will have roasted semolina ready and breakfast will be done in a jiffy.  

How to make Rava Upma?

1. Heat the oil or ghee in a pan on medium heat. Once hot add mustard seeds and let them pop.
2. Then add urad dal and chana dal, saute for 30 seconds.
   

   

3. Add cashews.
4. Fry till dal and cashews are light brown in color.
   

   

5. Then saute in green chili, ginger and curry leaves for a minute.
6. Add chopped onions along with salt.
   

   

7. Mix well and cook.
8. Cook till onions turn soft and translucent. please don’t brown the onions.
   

   

9. Add rava.
10. Roast rava for 6-7 minutes with stirring continuously. rava will change its color very slightly not a major change.
    

    

11. While you are roasting the rava, warm up the water. I microwaved the water for 1-2 minutes. You can heat the water on the stove top as well.
12. Once rava is roasted, add water with stirring constantly. So there will be no lumps. If you dump all the water at once and then you start mixing. This way you will have big lumps of sooji. So to avoid that always do both tasks (adding water and mixing) together.
    

    

13. Rava will absorb the water and will look like this.
14. Cover the pan and LOWER the heat.
    

    

15. Cook on low heat for 3-4 minutes. If needed, stir once halfway through.
16. Add lemon juice.

    

17. sprinkle chopped cilantro leaves
18. Mix well. It is ready to serve.
    

    

For the variation, you can try adding steamed or boiled veggies (corn, carrot, beans, peas) after onions are cooked.

How to serve South Indian upma?

• Upma is served as a breakfast or evening snack with coconut chutney
• It can be served with a cup of tea of coffee.
• To serve it Mumbai style (hotel style), Sprinkle 1-2 tablespoons of fine sev on top.
• It can be packed into the kid’s lunchbox or adult’s snack box.

Tips to make the best upma recipe:

• Making upma is very easy if you get the semolina and water ratio correct.
• If more water is added then it gets loose and sticky. If less water is added then it becomes dry.
• The quantity of water always depends on the quality of rava. But the usual proportion of Sooji:Water should be 1:2. Meaning you need double amount of water than sooji. In short, for 1 cup sooji, you need 2 cups of water.
• There is one more reason for sticky upma – If the sooji is not roasted properly. So take your time, roast on medium-low flame for about 6-7 minutes.