The Ultimate Guide to Kerala Breads, by a Local

Orotti, porotta, vellayappam, kalappam — the breads of Kerala, unlike roti, chapati, phukla or naan, remain shrouded in mystery. Nitin Sumitran attempts to lift the veil, with the ultimate guide to breads by a local.

India has always been a country of curries, stir-fried veggies and a multitude of accompaniments to every meal. Rice and breads play a major role in our cuisine, to mop up gravies, and as vehicles for bigger bolder flavours. While tandoori rotis, naans, chapattis, and paranthas are quite well known and well documented, the breads and pulaos from the south of India remain largely a mystery. On last count, India produced close to a staggering 6,000 varieties of rice, and the state of Kerala itself grew about 2,000 of these. It is therefore not surprising that most, (if not all) breads that the average Malayali consumes is rice-based, with the exception of the Malabar Paratha that is made with all purpose flour. Several breads are not fried, and instead rely on steaming, making it healthier and easier on the gut.

Malabar Porotta | Image by Sanjay Ramachandran

A Beginner’s Guide to Eating Bread

Let me introduce you to the Porotta, undoubtedly the most popular bread in the state. The Malabar Paratha, or porotta, requires loads of patience and time and is not something that every cook is has the skill to make. Porotta-making is an art that has to be learnt over time and innumerable hours of practice, and most restaurants in Kerala have a cook whose only job is to make porotta. The porotta requires a kneading of all-purpose flour, salt, eggs, oil and water that is rested a bit, given another final kneading, rolled it into balls, stretched like a rope, brushed liberally with oil, slapped into thin pancakes and pan-fried with more oil till you golden flecks appear. Then the steaming hot Porotta is quickly crushed along its the edges to fluff the layers within. The soft, flaky melt-in-the-mouth paratha is extremely beloved, all the way from Kasargod in the north to Thiruvananthapuram in the south, and can be paired with all kinds of curries. But like the North of India has its own beloved pairings — tandoori roti and butter chicken, dal makhani and roti or rajma and basmati chawal, the porotta is best paired with a Kerala beef fry, the state’s most beloved pairing. Porotta with beef fry, chicken curry, mutta curry (egg curry), or a simple omelette, for breakfast as early as 7 am, all seven days of the week. The porotta has a cult following in Kerala, similar to the vada pav in Maharashtra. The key to eating a porotta is to eat it hot; made with all-purpose flour, it has a tendency to get leathery when cold. In a small thattukada in Trivandrum, I tried a kothu porotta — cooked porotta is shredded into tiny pieces and cooked with sliced onions, green chillies, left-over meat and eggs. A complete meal in itself, it is delicious and satisfying.

Vellayappams | Image by Sanjay Ramachandran

Number 2 on my favourite breads list is undoubtedly the Vellayapam, the king of all Kerala breads, believed to have originated in neighbouring Sri Lanka — but this remains hotly debated. My earliest food memories are seeing these little white pillows stacked in glass windows at small thattukadas and kal shaaps on our annual visits to Kerala. This bread is made with a batter of ground rice and grated coconut that is fermented overnight with fresh sweet toddy (or more commonly now, yeast) and cooked the next day in a special cast-iron appam chatti by pouring the batter and swirling it around, so that it forms a thin lace along the edges and a soft, spongy pillow in the centre. Sometimes when I run out of curry to dunk my appam in, I break an egg over the appam, cook for a minute, then tear the lacy-crisp edge, dunk into the sunny-side yolk and pop it into my mouth. This lacy appam has a mildly sweet flavour due to the addition of grated coconut, and is perfectly matched with a spicy vegetable, mutton, chicken stew — or any Kerala curry, really.

Another unconventional bread (in terms of its appearance) is the Iddiappam, also called string hoppers or noolappam (nool means string in Malayalam). Idiappams are also closely connected with Sri Lanka, and is a beloved bread in that country too. As kids when we were picky about our food and spicy curries and stews were not our forte, my mum Niroja Sumitran served us Idiappam with freshly squeezed coconut milk and a sprinkling of sugar. We lapped that up joyously. To make this, rice flour is mixed with hot water and rolled into a dough while still hot, then put in a press (similar to the chakli / sev mould, but with finer holes), and pressed into super-thin noodles which are then steamed. Idiappam pairs beautifully with mild stews, fiery fish curry, or meat curries. And given that it is steam and not fried, it is much lighter on the stomach.

Mappila Breads from the Malabar

Like the Maharashtrian bhakri (another personal favourite), Kerala has the Pathiri or podi pathiri which is a chapatti made with rice flour instead of the more conventional wheat flour, gently mixed with hot salted water, rolled into wafer thin discs and cooked on a tava. The pathiris are then gently smeared with fresh, thick coconut milk and stacked one on top of the other to keep them soft and moist. Before silicon brushes were available, chicken feathers were bunched together and dunked into coconut milk, used as a brush to smear the pathiris. Pathiri will pair beautifully with any meat or vegetable curry. At some restaurants in Calicut (truly a city for the food lover), pathiri are made so thin and delicate, that it is impossible to peel one off from the other. A group of us, six very hungry boys, would sit down and ask for100 pathiris. The server, not batting an eye, would never bother counting them, simply peeling off a large round, approximating anywhere between 80 and 120!

Kalappam with meen moilee | Image by Sanjay Ramachandran

Another rice flour based bread is the Orotti which is a Malabar special thick bread that is flavoured with coarsely chopped shallots, grated coconut, coconut bits and fennel seeds. Due to the nature of this bread, it cannot be rolled with a conventional rolling pin and instead is pressed gently between the palms of your hand on to a banana leaf, gently patted on to a hot Tava & fried on both sides till they are a flaky and a bit crisp on the outside but still soft on the inside with the diverse flavours of the shallots, fennel and coconut bits adding so much flavour to this simple bread. Times when Banana leaves were not so freely available in Mumbai, I remember my Mum spreading the dough on a plastic sheet that was the previous days milk bag, before expertly tipping it on to the hot Tava. My brother and I would take joy in breaking off little pieces off the edges, tossing it in our hands a few times to cool it before popping it into our mouth. Best combination – Orotti with any meat curry but our family favourite for breakfast or dinner is the Orotti with a simple slightly runny potato curry.

A close cousin of the orotti is the Nei Pathiri, a classic Malabar Mappila speciality. Similar to the orotti on ingredients (rice flour, shallots, coconut, fennel seeds) and cooked on a hot tava, it is then rolled into smaller discs and deep fried in oil to achieve a perfectly crisp exterior, while still soft on the inside. When we were little, and calories and acid reflux were terms seldom heard, my mother would shape nei pathiri into little stars, deep fry, and serve alongside varatharacha chicken curry.

The Kalappam is another beloved bread from the south of Kerala and derives its name from kal or toddy. It shares similarities with vellayapam, but unlike the fine vellayappam batter, kalappam batter remains slightly coarse, or thari thari, as we say in Malayalam. The fermenting agent here is traditionally fresh, sweet toddy, but this is getting harder to access in cities, so yeast is used as a quick, effective substitute. Kalappam is cooked on a tava like an uttappam, and resembles a super soft, thick, spongy dosa with slight traces of sweetness from the toddy. Pair it with anything, even mop it up with a spicy chamanthi.

Rice is Life, in Kerala

Kerala has always received abundant rainfall, and rice cultivation is done on a large scale, making it a staple of Malayali cuosine. The state alone consumes about 4 million tonnes of rice a year, and is home to a several indigenously grown varieties, the most common being Matta Rice which also goes by the names Rosematta, Palakkadan Matta, Parboiled Rice or Red Rice. It is one of the most widely consumed varieties in Kerala given its unique features – it is extremely filling, nutritious and full of various health benefits. It pairs well with coconutty vegetarian curries like erissery, moru curry, avial, olan, pachadi, theeyal, as well as meat and seafood, especially vartharacha chicken, mutton, beef or pork curry, thenga aracha meen curry, chemeen curry or njandu curry. Matta rice flour is used to make idlis, appams and several other rice-based snacks. It is cultivated in the dense black soil of Palakkad in South Kerala, the source of its signature reddish tinge when cooked, and reserves pride of place on Kerala’s Onam sadya. I for one have always been left open-mouthed at the mountain of rice the guy next to me eats, always asking for seconds, while I struggle to finish what is already served on my ela.

In the not-so-distant past another kind of rice that always fascinated me was Thenga Chor or Coconut Rice, was once known as the poor man’s biryani. Thenga Chor is made with small-grained and aromatic Khaima rice or Jeeragashala rice that is cooked in a thin extract of coconut milk with a few spices and a dash of turmeric in an urli (Kerala’s traditional bell metal cooking vessel). This yellow-tinged, mildly spiced rice is best paired with Malabar-style spicy erachi curry. But a word of advice for the wise: since thenga chor cooked solely in freshly extracted coconut milk, do not plan any activies after a meal of thenga chor and erachi curry, as it is certain to induce a deep stupor. Another version of this is Nei Chor or ghee rice. Khaima rice is first fried liberally in fragrant ghee and then slow-cooked with equal amounts of water till until fully absorbed, and the rice glistens with all the ghee in which it was cooked. Finish with a liberal garnish of golden fried onions, cashews and plump raisins, and pair it with either a mild stews or fiery curry, plump papadum and a liberal dollop of date chutney, and you will be inducted into the culinary heaven of Kerala. At weddings, nei chor and vegetable or mutton stew remains the go-to food on the Thale Divasam (the pre-wedding party for the close family and friends) celebration at the bride and groom’s homes at large, despite more exotice cuisine, influenced by Bollywood and affluence from the Gulf boom, making inroads into the tradition.

A heavy, sumptuous breakfast is a good way to start the day -- ask any Malayalee. Puttu-kadala or puttu-cherupayar are the state’s favourite choice of breakfast. Puttu (rice flour layered with grated coconut and steam-cooked in a puttu-kutti or cylindrical tube fitted on to a pot of boiling water) is a breakfast dish typically eaten with kadala curry (made with black chickpeas) or cherupayar curry (made with green gram), and sometimes even fish curry. Puttu isn’t however restricted to breakfast, and can be eaten for lunch or dinner. When we were kids and the heat of spice was not something we were accustomed to, mum used to give us puttu mashed with a ripe banana, a dollop of ghee and a generous sprinkling of sugar. Of course, as an adult, puttu with last night’s fish curry, stored in the meen chatti where the flavours get more intense with time, is the breakfast that makes my heart skip a beat.

Fish biryani | Image by Sanjay Ramachandran

The single most-consumed dish in India today is the Biryani. According to one food delivery aggregator, 4.5 crore biryanis were sold in India in 2021; another claimed that 100+ biryanis were ordered every minute in India -- a mind-boggling figure considering that this number is probably greater than the population of several western. Among the 26-odd variants of biryani in the country, Kerala has 2 versions, the Kozhikode biryani where marinated meat and rice are cooked together on dum, and the Thalasseri biryani where meat and rice are cooked separately, layered and then placed on dum. What makes Kerala biryani truly unique is that unlike other states in the country, Kerala does not use long-grained basmati, preferring instead a shorter grain of rice called the rose khaima/ jeeraga samba, another extremely flavourful rice. Here, the rice is washed, dried in a muslin cloth for a while, and then roasted in ghee till fragrant. It is then cooked in in salted and spiced boiling water, then layered with meat, garnished generously with fried cashews, raisins and golden-fried onions, and slow-cooked on the dum. Red chilli powder is conspicuously absent, and tomatoes are used sparingly, so while this biryani may not be as vibrant in colour, it packs a deadly punch on the flavour front. Accompaniments to a biryani are the classic raita, but also pappadum and a generous dollop of Pacha Manga Chamandhi made with green mangoes, grated coconut, coriander, green chilli, salt and fresh lime and Eenthapazhamum Munthiringa Chamandhi made with date and raisins. Along with the usual chicken and mutton, don’t forget to try Kerala’s prawn biryani, buff biryani and that most special Malabar fish biryani not found in any other part of India. And finally, remember to never ask for a vegetable (or worse, paneer) biryani unless you are prepared to make the ultimate culinaryu faux pas. On that note, remember to eat like a local, at small restaurants, thattukadas and kal shaaps for a taste of the true flavours of the state.

Nitin Sumitran is an ex-hospitality & corporate aviation professional based out of Mumbai. He operates a small home-kitchen in Powai, Mumbai, together with his wife Deepa, specialising in simple, home-style Kerala cuisine. They deliver across Mumbai and Thane. You can reach them on Instagram as @appamstories or directly on +919004032817.

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