Ferment nation: For Batter or for Verse

What happens when one of India's oldest staple foods gets together with an ancient preservation technique? Here's a look at how India ferments rice.

Fermenting Rice. Illustrated by Spoorthi KY, Visual Storyteller at ThisDay.

Dosa and other lessons in fermenting rice and lentils.

My first-ever lesson in fermentation was probably dosa. It could’ve been kanji, but I never really paid attention when my mother made it; not until I grew up and tried making it myself. However, for dosa I knew the process thoroughly — the soaking of the rice and urad dal overnight, grinding it into a fine paste the next morning, and leaving it for a few hours to ferment before turning it into a crisp paper masala dosa, and then using the leftover batter the next day to make idlis; the batter would be bubblier and fluffed-up the next day. Back then I did not know that the process was called fermentation. Much later, as an undergraduate student of food science, I realised that, more or less, the same scientific process was creating kanji as well as making dosa batter fluffier and a bit sour. Thanks to the works of the French chemists Antoine Lavoisier (late 1700s) and Louis Pasteur (1850), we know this process as sugar transformation initiated and sustained by the microbes.

India is the second largest cultivator of rice and has a culture of fermenting it to make a variety of foods as well as beverages. There has been mention of several rice-based fermented alcoholic drinks in the Rigveda (soma, sura) and the post-Vedic period (medaka, prasanna). The northeastern states of India continue to make and consume rice wines/beers — zutho of Nagaland, poka-a of Arunachal Pradesh, xaj of Assam, zufang of Mizoram, and chang of Sikkim are some of the popular varieties. Haria, another rice-based drink, is popular in East-Central India.

A poem from Tamil Sangam literature mentions a fermented rice wine as a staple of the fisher folks:

Un-pounded rice cooked to a mushy porridge

and spread in a wide wicker basket to cool down,

finely ground sprouted rice – like white ants

in nests where snakes reside – mixed with this

and fermented for two days and two nights

in a strong-mouthed jar till it matures,

this warm aromatic wine that ripples on touch,

along with fresh fried fish, you’ll get when hungry.

(source: https://oldtamilpoetry.com/2016/04/21/perumpaanaattrup-padai-275-282/)

In Assam, rice and urad dal are also fermented to make pitha, a pancake-like dish which is made into a wrap with a filling of black sesame. Pitha is also common in Odisha, where a range of dishes are made using the combination of fermented rice and urad dal batter — for enduri pitha, it is spread on a turmeric leaf, stuffed with a mixture of jaggery and coconut, and steamed; chakuli pitha is an Odiya cousin of the dosa and is made in a similar fashion; podo pitha is a sweet snack where this batter is mixed with banana, jaggery, ghee, dry fruits, and spices and then baked into a cake.

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In 2021, a fermented rice dish from the eastern part of India made an international debut. MasterChef Australia contestant Kishwar Chowdhury served the judges smoked rice water with aloo bhorta and sardines — a staple dish in Odisha, West Bengal, and Assam known as pakhala bhat, panta bhat, and poita bhat respectively. Leftover cooked rice is soaked in sour curd and water and left overnight to ferment. It’s eaten the next day with either fish, aloo bhorta (potato mash), or on its own. The fermented rice works as a coolant for the body during summers and is commonly eaten in the rural areas by the Adivasi and farming communities. This form of rice fermentation, however, is not limited to eastern India. A version of it in Kerala — pazham kanji — is made with matta rice. Leftover cooked rice is soaked in water overnight in earthen pots. The next morning, crushed shallots, chillies, and beaten curd are added to the rice along with salt and eaten cold with pickle or pappadum.

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As I learnt the lessons in fermenting through dosa, I also learnt that what makes the process perfect is the combination of rice with urad, a dal that gets more flavourful when fermented. In Uttar Pradesh, a dish called dubki is prepared with urad dal paste, which is lightly fermented and then dropped into hing-flavoured boiling water like little dumplings. Dubki is typically eaten with steamed rice. In Jharkhand, a combination of rice, chana dal, and urad dal is used to make the breakfast dish called dhuska. The trio is ground into a paste and left to ferment for a couple of hours before being fried into a poori/vada-like shape to be eaten with potato curry.

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As I dig deeper and read more, I find fermented foods a lot more deeply embedded in our food culture than I could have imagined. This series is a humble effort of a curious writer to bring as much of it together as possible.