Name: How to make Soft Ragi Rotti
Prep time: 20 min
Cook time: 2 min
Total time: 42 min
Ingredients: 1 cup Ragi flour; 1 cup Rice flour; 1 tsp Salt; 1 tbsp Groundnut Oil; 1 tsp Mustard seeds; 1 tsp Jeera; 1 Cucumber (grated); 1 Onion (finely chopped); 2 Green Chillies; 1 Carrot (grated)

Ragi Rotti is a deliciously nutty, soft and flavourful bread and a staple food in Karnataka.

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Ragi Rotti

Ragi rotti is an easy dish to prepare and takes significantly less time to prep. You can eat it for breakfast, lunch or dinner. This ragi rotti dough stores well in the fridge for 2-3 days, which gives you the advantage of including this healthy millet in your diet multiple times a week.

This particular recipe I have written down is what I learnt from a mom friend. From my earlier experience, Ragi rotti usually hardened when it got cold. One day, my son mentioned that his friend brought ragi rotti in his lunch box; I was curious whether the child liked hard rottis or if his mum had found a way to make soft ragi rottis.

I asked her about it, and she told me the magic ingredient to make rottis – rice or ragi- is adding grated cucumbers to the dough! That was brilliant! So, I had to pen this down since ragi rotti makes for a filling and healthy lunch box item.

Ingredients to make Ragi Rotti

Main Ingredients

Ragi flour – You can make ragi flour at home or buy the flour like me. Ragi flour can be made by soaking ragi in water for a few hours, sun drying the soaked ragi on a cloth, and grinding it into a fine powder. You may also let the ragi sprout and repeat the drying and grinding process for a healthier version of the ragi flour.
Rice flour – Rice flour is readily available in all stores. Similar to making ragi flour, you can make rice flour at home. My mother used to make rice flour since they weren’t available as readily in the 80s and 90s.
Cucumbers – This magic ingredient helps keep the ragi rottis soft in your lunch box.
Jeera

Other ingredients (definitely add flavour when included).

Finely chopped onions
Grated carrots
De-seeded green chillies
Finely chopped coriander leaves

How to prep?

Add ragi flour and rice flour in equal quantities to a large bowl. Add salt to this bowl and give them a mix. Keep aside. You can choose the cup size to measure the ingredients depending on your family’s size.

Next, you can get your vegetables ready.

Use one cucumber for every 2 cups of flour (ragi and rice combined). Peel the cucumber and grate it. Place a bowl under the grater instead of a cutting board since the cucumber will ooze water.

Grate carrots and keep them aside. Slit a green chilli vertically, and remove the seeds and veins to reduce the heat. If you are comfortable with the heat, you may include the seeds too. Chop an onion as fine as possible and keep it aside.

Add all the chopped vegetables to the flour.

In a tadka pan, warm some oil and toast mustard seeds, jeera seeds and asafoetida. Once the mustard seeds start popping, turn off the flame and add this oil to the bowl with the ragi flour.

With the help of a spoon, bring it all together. Once the heat from the oil has reduced, you can use your hands to mix the dough thoroughly by adding sprinkles of water to bring the dough together. Remember that the cucumber already has a water content that will contribute to the dough.

The dough is ready when all ingredients are well combined and the dough is soft and wet. Spread some oil on top of the dough, cover it with a lid and let it rest for at least 20 minutes.

How to cook the ragi rotti?

The next step is to spread the rotti before cooking it. You can use banana leaves, parchment paper, or a plastic sheet to spread the rotti.

(If you use a banana leaf to pat the dough, move it back and forth over a flame to make it tender. If the leaf is crisp, it might tear while you spread the dough.)

Roll a large handful of ragi rotti dough from the bowl into a ball. Place this ball on the parchment paper (I use this most of the time) and start spreading it by pushing the dough outwards from every direction. You can dip your fingers in a bowl of water to assist you in spreading the dough.

(Some expert aunties and grandmas can quickly spread the dough directly on the skillet without burning their fingers)

This process takes some time to get right, but you’ll get there if you do this often enough. Let this process not discourage you from making this delicious dish. It doesn’t have to be perfect.

Place a few holes in the spread-out dough, allowing it to cook evenly.

Take the parchment paper and invert it onto a hot skillet. Press the parchment so that the rotti sticks to the surface of the iron tawa. In a few seconds, you can peel off the parchment easily. Next, add a little oil to the rotti and place a lid on top of the tawa to steam cook the ragi rotti.

The rotti will cook in less than a minute, so do not step away from the stove. Lift the lid, and remove the cooked Ragi rotti from the skillet.

Serving Suggestions

Ragi rotti goes well with any chutney – our favourite is coconut and tangy tomato chutney. If you do not have time to make the chutney, you can eat it with some butter too. You may, of course, eat ragi rotti alone, with curd or even Chutney Pudi.

Types of Ragi Rotti

Since roti is a common word to describe flatbread, ragi rotti can be prepared in a few ways apart from the one I have described.

The recipe I have written includes ragi flour, rice flour, and grated cucumbers – this recipe makes a soft version of akki rotti convenient to pack in lunch boxes.
Ragi rotti can also be made without the grated cucumber. If you skip the cucumber, the rotti can be prepared in a crispy manner that needs to be consumed hot off the skillet; otherwise, it gets tough as it cools down.
You can also make ragi rotti like jowar roti – by using hot water to knead it into a dough and roll it out like a chapati.
The last version is to add an equal measure of ragi and wheat flour (atta) and make it into a ragi chapati. This is the most common version of ragi roti since it is easily rolled like rotis.

Here’s a link demonstrating how to make soft ragi rotti for your next meal –

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