A low carb upma made with riced cauliflower is a great way for diabetics looking to lower the carbs compared to regular rava upma.
How can one make Upma healthy? Traditional Upma is carb heavy, right? I have 2 ideas for you to upgrade your traditional upma.
Make your upma healthier
1) Add cauliflower ‘rice’ to bulk up the carb
The paleo diet started this clever trend. If you process cauliflower in your food processor, and pulse it to a “rice” consistency; you can use it as a grain substitute. If you compare 1 cauliflower to 1 cup cooked semolina:
Calories: Cauliflower – 146 vs Semolina – 601
Carbs: Cauliflower – 29 g vs Semolina – 122 g
In each instance cauliflower is almost 1/4 the amount of calories and carbs compared to rava.
Cauliflower rice
Note – You can make the cauliflower ‘rice’ portion in bulk and store it in an airtight container in your refrigerator. You could then use it to bulk up not just upma, but also fried rice, lemon rice, etc.
2) Use whole wheat instead of white rava
I used whole wheat couscous from Trader Joe’s, which is the whole grain version of Rava. Being whole wheat, it is par boiled with its bran and germ intact, it has higher fiber (21 g for one cup vs 7g) than rava.
The couscous only takes only few minutes to cook. I can get hot, fluffy cooked grain in 5 minutes by just adding hot water. I can avoid the traditional step of roasting and cooking the semolina as per traditional method.
Step by step Pictures
Adding hot water to cook couscous..
Prepare cauliflower rice
Add oil to pan. Add mustard seeds, let it splutter. Add urad dal, green chilies, onions and curry leaves and stir.
Upma saute
Once the onion brown, add cauliflower ‘rice’, to the pan and stir for a few minutes.
Upma ready…
Recipe
Healthy Low-Carb Upma made with riced cauliflower and couscous
- 1 tbsp Oil
- 1/2 tsp mustard seeds
- 1 tsp Urad dal
- Few Curry leaves
- 1 medium onion
- 1 medium Jalapeno pepper chopped or 2-3 regular green chilies
- 1/4 cup chopped coriander leaves
- Salt to taste
- 1/2 head Cauliflower
- 1 cup Couscous or semolina
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Cook couscous by adding boiling water to couscous in a hot pack container. Set it aside
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Add cauliflower florets to food processor and pulse it until you get a 'rice' consistency.
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Add oil to pan. Add mustard seeds, let it splutter. Add urad dal, green chilies, onions and curry leaves and stir.
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Let the onions brown for a few minutes. Add cauliflower 'rice', to the pan and stir for a few minutes.
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Add cooked couscous, salt to taste and finally coriander leaves to garnish.
You want your cauliflower cooked, but not mushy. It should have the texture of cooked rava and NOT as though you added cauliflower puree to the dish.
If you are using traditional method of making upma (boiling rava in water), I would recommend sauteing the cauliflower rice separately and adding it to the upma.
Conclusion
Taste
As far as taste is concerned, my daughters could not tell that there was cauliflower in-between. The cauliflower neither has any additional flavor nor does it take away any flavor from the grain. So, if you are a diabetic and looking for a way to consume traditional dishes without the sugar rise from refined grains, then this is a great option.
Is it really low carb?
If you want to go all-in with low carb, you can take out the grain completely and go 100% with just cauliflower. Now, that would truly be low-carb.
But personally, I like to do 50-50, so I don’t feel deprived (or hungry even after eating large amounts of cauliflower). With the 50-50, I also get to incorporate veggies in larger quantities than normal. This is also a great way to sneak in veggies to the kids who don’t like to see any veggies in their plate.
Have you seen or tried the ‘cauliflower rice’ technique? Let me know in the comments below. I look forward to your insights.
Are you looking for other healthy breakfast options:
- Healthy Ven Pongal – made from barley
- Healthy Lemon Rice – using the same ‘cauliflower rice’ technique
- Healthy Masala Curry – to have with Masala Dosa or Poori
I like your idea of using cauliflower rice for the upma. I also read your other recipe using Tsampa to make the dumplings. In that recipe you stated “Add 1 cup of tsampa and stir until it comes together like an upma” So maybe it’s possible to make Tsampa upma. Do you think that will work?
Well, tsampa is a flour as opposed to the more granular rava. The correct term would have been “comes together like kali”, a tamil dish, but not a famous one. But I suppose you could try, may come out stickier than normal upma.