Pazhaiya Choru or “Old rice”

Pazhaiya Choru is literally “old rice” but is in fact a slightly fermented preparation made to use up one day’s leftovers by turning it into a nutritious, probiotic breakfast. Serve with any sides of your choice like Fried anchovies or nethhili meen or sauteed greens and make a meal of it, or simply thin with buttermilk for a filling, textured drink.

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Ingredients Method Notes

Ingredients

For the fermented rice
Up to 1 cup of cooked rice; short to medium-grain amylose-rich varieties will be best for fermentation
Salt to taste

To serve

½ cup yoghurt or buttermilk
Chopped sambhar onions
1 spicy green chilli
Lime pickle

Method

Gather a day’s leftover rice in a pot, add just enough water to cover, and use your hands to mash up a little. Leave this out to ferment overnight, covered.
Depending on the ambient temperatures and the type of rice used, the mixture will sour more or less, but it is typical to consume this for breakfast the next morning.

To serve

Mix in the salt, and the yogurt or just the buttermilk until you have the consistency you desire.
Top with chopped onions, green chillies and serve with lime pickle on the side.
If you don’t like the taste of too many raw onions, you could lightly sautee these before adding—but take care to stop the cooking before they become too soft and lose all their tasty crunch.

Notes

You could save a few spoonfuls of the fermented rice water to add to the next-day's old rice--like a starter culture. Eventually this will improve taste and also make the fermentation process a little faster.
If ambient temperatures are too warm, consider leaving the rice out in a clay pot
If the temperatures are too cool, then leaving it in a regular stainless steel vessel, perhaps covered with a towel, may help achieve optimal fermentation temperatures.
For those in the US or other colder countries, leaving this in an oven with the light on, or near the warmth of a fridge are also methods to try.