Upma, Upuma, Uppuma - It's what's for breakfast!

Upuma is a savory breakfast dish that comes in many variations. I’ve always preferred a savory breakfast to a sweet one, so I was delighted to have some new recipes for some old standby breakfast ingredients. Btw, there are several different spellings for upuma if you’re looking up recipes. Upuma, upma, and uppuma seem to be the most common.

I have four different recipes here to share. The first three are from my Amma: rava upuma (cream of wheat), semiya upuma (broken angel hair pasta), and vermicelli upuma (rice stick/ vermicelli). The fourth recipe is an upuma variation of mine that I really like that uses tofu and makes a great tofu scramble.

Rava Upuma – Savory Cream of Wheat
This recipe was a big surprise for me because my only exposure to cream of wheat prior to this dish was as porridge made according to the instructions on the box. However, rava upuma is a relatively dry dish, with the wheat grains separate and falling apart from each other, not sticky. The recipe below makes four large servings.

Ingredients
2 cups farina/ cream of wheat
1 medium potato
1 large onion
1 piece ginger (about the top half of your thumb)
~ 1.5 cups mixed peas, carrots, green beans fresh or frozen (I used a frozen mix that had corn in it too, and that’s ok though not standard)
1 large tomato or several small tomatoes
1 green chili
~1 tsp mustard seeds
8-15 curry leaves (depending on size of leaves and personal taste)
2-6+ dried red chilies (depending on heat preferences
2 tsp to 1+ tbl of split urad dhal
~1 tsp split yellow peas
~2 tsp salt (This recipe loves salt. I put in ~1.5 tsp in, and needed to add a bunch more at the end.)
3+ tbl oil (You can vary the amount of oil depending on how rich you want the dish to be. Traditionally, this is a rich and salty dish. Having more oil does help with the flavor.)
~3.5 cups boiling water (you can add non-boiling water, but it adds time to the recipe)

Ingredients

Note that the green chili is missing from this photo. Of course, I finally found my bag of chilies after the dish was made.

Directions
Put the kettle on to boil the water. Toast the dry cream of wheat. This is best done over medium heat, stirring very frequently. Steam will rise off the wheat, and there will be a very toasty smell, even before it changes color. Toast until it becomes a golden brown. Make sure to remove the cream of wheat from the pan because it will continue to toast even off the heat and often will burn if not put in a new container.

Toasted Cream of Wheat


Dice the onion, mince the garlic, thinly dice the potato (see picture), thinly slice or mince the green chili, medium-large dice the tomato, and chop the carrots and beans into small pieces, or heat the frozen vegetable mixture.

Thinly Diced Potato


Heat the oil over medium heat. Add the mustard seeds. Once the mustard seeds have popped, add the curry leaves and red chilies. Stir for a few seconds (about 10), then add the dhals. Fry the spice – dhal mixture until the urad dhal is golden reddish brown. You don’t want it to turn dark brown. Once the dhal is the right color, add the onions, ginger, green chili, and salt. Sauté this mixture until the onions become translucent.

Frying Onion Mixture

This should hopefully help give a sense of the dhal color as well as what the mixture looks like. Normally, the green chilies would be in here. (I’m sorry for the blurriness. The steam caused problems with the focus.)

Once the onion is ready, add the potato and fry until it is translucent as well. Once the potato is partially cooked, add the other vegetables. If raw, make sure they get cooked. If frozen, it’s easy to defrost them or zap them in the microwave beforehand to make this step quick. Once the other vegetables are cooked, add the chopped tomato. Here is the frying vegetable mixture.



Give the tomatoes about a minute or two in the pan, and then add the boiling water to the mixture.


(Sorry, another problem focusing because of the steam)

Make sure the mixture is at a boil, and then add the toasted cream of wheat. Stir it in very quickly to make sure that it is evenly distributed in the mixture. You’ll want to do this quickly because it will thicken fast and start to spit because of the boiling. Put a lid on the pot and take the temperature down to low. Leave the pot on low for five minutes. After the five minutes, take the pot off the heat for two minutes before stirring and serving. The two minutes off the heat lets the moisture in the mixture soften everything stuck to the pan so that nothing sticks when you stir and serve the upuma.

How to Serve
Upuma is typically eaten with nicely ripe bananas. This particular upuma is also often eaten with white sugar sprinkled on top. This was a mind-blower for me when I first encountered it, but it actually tastes good. Of course, you can also eat upuma without any extras or with Indian pickle or hot sauce.

Rava Upuma with Banana


To give a sense of texture and the separateness of the grains, here’s a close-up shot.


Notes
To scale this recipe, I would suggest about .5 cup of cream of wheat per person. Also, the ratio of cream of wheat to water is about 1:1.75. 1:2 is too wet, and 1:1.5 is a little too dry. The amount of vegetables and spices would be modified in rough proportion to the amount of cream of wheat and your personal taste.

The toasted dhals have the taste and consistency of toasted nuts. They soften in the water and so don’t have a sharp crunch. Because of this, I often will put in several tablespoons of urad dhal, just because I like the taste, but also to increase (albeit slightly) the protein of the dish.

I always fry the mustard seeds over medium heat because if I use a higher heat to make it go faster, it just ends up burning. Once the mustard seeds, curry leaves, chilies and dhal are fried, you can raise the heat to any level you feel appropriate to fry the onions and other vegetables.

Semiya Upuma
Semiya upuma is made with the inch-long angel hair pasta that you can buy at Indian grocery stores. It’s not the ultra-thin noodles that are used for kheer however. The ingredients and procedure for making semiya upuma are nearly identical to making rava upuma with a few exceptions, which I will note as I go through the recipe below.

Semiya Upuma Ingredients

The large onion is accidentally missing from this picture.

The ingredients in the picture are scaled slightly less in quantity than in the previous recipe. I kept the vegetable, spice and dhal ratios about the same, but I have about 1.5-1.75 cups of noodles.

Directions
Put the kettle on to boil the water. Dry toast the noodles. They will turn opaque and then reddish. Stop here; you don’t want them to turn brown. When toasted, put them aside in a separate container.

Toasted Noodles


Follow all the steps from the rava upuma recipe up through all the vegetables being fried and cooked. Instead of adding water to the vegetables, add the noodles. Fry them with the vegetable mixture for a minute or two so that they are fully coated and incorporated into the mixture. Now, add just enough boiling water to come to the surface of the mixture. The mixture should be at a boil (if not, wait until it comes to a boil), and then put on the lid and turn the heat to low. Five minutes on low, two minutes off the heat. Stir and serve.

Finished Semiya Upuma


How to Serve
This is served with bananas, but no sugar on top. It’s often eaten with pickle or hot sauce.

Vermicelli Upuma
Vermicelli upuma is made with rice vermicelli/ rice stick that you can buy at Asian grocery stores. It has a different flavor and ingredient profile than the preceding two recipes.

Ingredients
~ 1/3+ of a package of rice noodles
.5 cup fresh grated coconut (thawed from freezer is fine)
1 large onion, diced
2+ green chilies, sliced or minced
Piece ginger size of entire thumb. minced
1-2 tsp urad dhal
.75 tsp mustard seeds
10-15 curry leaves
3-10 dried red chilies
3+ tbls oil
salt, to taste
boiling water

Vermicelli Upuma Ingredients


Directions
Cover the rice noodles with boiling water and let sit for four minutes. After four minutes, put into a colander, rinse with cold water, and drain. Once drained, roughly chop the pile of noodles so that the pieces are about 1-2 inches long.

Heat the oil and mustard seeds over medium heat. After the seeds pop, add the curry leaves and red chilies. After a few seconds, add the urad dhal and toast until reddish brown. Add onions, ginger, chilies, and salt. Fry until the onion is lightly golden brown. Stir in the coconut. Add the chopped noodles. Stir thoroughly to mix the noodles and the onion coconut spice mixture. Cook for a few more minutes to heat the noodles, and the upuma is done.

Finished Vermicelli Upuma


To Serve
This upuma is served similarly to the semiya upuma, with a banana and often pickle or hot sauce.

Notes
The rice noodles can stick to the bottom of the pan. If you let the dish rest for a few minutes off the heat when it’s finished, the crust on the bottom will soften, and you’ll be able to stir it into the upuma.

Because the dhal in this upuma doesn’t soak in any water, it has a crunchy texture that’s much more obvious. A little goes a long way, so I use much less in this type of upuma than in rava and semiya upuma.

Again, like all the other upumas, the amounts of all the ingredients can be varied to reflect your personal taste preferences.

Tofu Upuma? Tasty Tofu Scramble
Sometimes I just want a big pile of protein for breakfast. As a vegetarian, this is not always easy to achieve. Well, it turns out that the basic upuma recipe, with a few tweaks, makes what it now my favorite tofu scramble. I eat it with bread or toast.

Ingredients
1 pound of extra firm tofu (although any firmness will work)
~ .5 - 1 cup mixed vegetables
1 large onion, diced
1 medium tomato, chopped
1 piece ginger, about size of top of thumb, minced
1 green chili, sliced or minced
3-5 dried red chilies
~1 tsp mustard seeds
8-15 curry leaves, depending on size
~1.5 tsp cumin
~.75 tsp turmeric
~.5 tsp cayenne pepper
salt
~3 tbl oil

Tofu Scramble Ingredients


Directions
Squash the tofu into teeny tiny pieces into a colander and let drain.

Fry the mustard seeds over medium heat until they pop. Add curry leaves and red chilies. After a few seconds, add onions, ginger, green chilies, and salt. When the onions are lightly golden, add the turmeric, cumin, and cayenne. Add the mixed vegetables. When the mixed vegetables are heated through, add the tomatoes. After one to two minutes, add the crumbled tofu. Stir thoroughly to mix the spices and vegetables into the tofu. Cook until the tofu is steaming hot. Dish is done.

Finished Tofu Scramble


I hope that you enjoy these recipes. There's as many variations on upuma as there are different families, communities, and geographies. These are just the ones from my family. If anyone has any favorite upuma recipes they'd like to share, I'd love to see them.

All the best,
Jen

Thanks. I too prefer savory breakfasts -- and these look fabulous.

I really appreciate the detailed instructions and photos, too.

Wow, what a beautiful post. I like savory things for breakfast, too. I may have to head down to Patel bros. today for some 'angel hair pasta'. Thanks for sharing these recipes!

I really enjoy your posts. I would love to see one on masala dosa. The last one was on idli but masala dosa is my favorite. I really want to make these foods and your posts are very good.

Thanks everybody!

Toria, I am planning a dosa post (I want to include a couple different types, so we’ll how long it takes me), but I have to admit that dosas made at home are different (typically smaller) than the ones made at the restaurants. I know my in-laws like going out for restaurant dosas to get the ones that are hard to make at home (larger sizes, paper dosas, etc.) However, with an enormous griddle and some practice, you could probably get close. At home, the batter is typically spread out very thinly in a spiral with the back of a spoon or the batter ladle. The only time I saw dosas made professionally was at a hotel breakfast buffet in Chennai. If I remember correctly, he had a very large circular griddle and spread the batter in one big swoop with a tool that looked like wide metal ruler.

Yum, dosas. I'll have to get some batter started.

Jen

thaiobsessed wrote:Wow, what a beautiful post.

Ditto! Great pics, enticing recipes. Now I just need a few more mornings a week to start practicing! And, as noted above, thanks.

Thank you for this post. I had never heard of Upuma before. It looks great and it looks like something that could be eaten for breakfast or any other meal. I hope to try out one of these recipes soon.