Puttu - steam yourself to coconut heaven!

Travelling through India is for a young European super exciting! On every corner you can find delicious food from breakfast to dinner, from salty to spicy and sweet. Even more, not only the tastes and flavours are different here, but also the instruments used for preparing these dishes. One of them is the Puttu steamer. A strange looking machine that some of our community might confuse with a chimney, an Indian shisha or someone even guessed it was a toilet – not kidding! To safe you from further misunderstandings about the function of this thing, we therefore decided to show you what it is for.

How to do it

So, it is my pleasure to show you below, how to use this strange looking cooking instrument and how deliciously easy you can bring yourself and your guests to coconut heaven.

Ingredients

Equipment

200g rice flour
200ml water
5 pinches of salt
1 coconut (or coconut powder)

1 Puttu steamer
1 coconut grater

Step by step

First, dissolve the salt in water.
Then, put the the rice flour in a big bowl and sprinkle the flour with the saltwater while mixing it with your fingers carefully.
Important, do NOT kneed it! This is crucial for the final texture. Add 2/3 of the water step by step in this way. Leave 1/3 of the water by the side.
Leave the flour to rest for 10 minutes. This gives the flour some time to soak in the water.
In the meanwhile you can prepare the coconut. For this, take the coconut in the one hand and one heavy knife in the other. Cut it open by chopping on the center-side of the nut.
Then, grate the nut with a professional coconut grater or a salad grater.
Finally, add the rest of the water to the rice flour until it evenly forms small crumbs.
Now, fill the lower part of the steamer with water and put it on the stove for boiling.
Take the zylinder part of the Puttu steamer and fill it with thin layers in turns of the coconut and the rice flour.
When the water is boiling you can put the zylinder on top of it and close it with the cup. After about 3-5 minutes the steam will come out on top of the Puttu machine.
After one additional minute, finally remove the Puttu from the zylinder and serve it on a plate. Mostly it is served together with chickpea curry for breakfast. Feel free to make it an even sweeter breakfast with fried banana aside.
Most noteworthy, enjoy!

Certainly, Puttu is not a typical sweet one can find in India, but it is rather served for breakfast. Nevertheless, we could not resist sharing with you this delicious coconut dish and strange instrument. As soon as you have the usability memorised you can amend the recipe according to your taste and preferred level of sweetness.