Jowar upma
Preparation Time
15 minutes
Cooking Time
35 minutes
Difficulty Level
easy
Meal Type
Breakfast
Serves 3
Key Ingredients
- Whole jowar (sorghum) grain
About This Recipe
This recipe uses whole jowar grain, not jowar rava. The grain is soaked overnight, pressure-cooked until each kernel is tender and slightly chewy, like pearl barley, and then tossed in the same tempering that goes into a sooji upma: mustard seeds, urad dal, curry leaves, green chilli, ginger and onion, with carrot for colour and roasted groundnuts for crunch. Jowar is called jonna in Telugu and jola in Kannada.
Whole-grain millet upma keeps its bite. Nothing turns to paste, the grains stay separate, and a squeeze of lemon at the end lifts the mild, nutty taste of jowar. Because the grain is cooked whole, the bran and germ are still there, which is where the fibre and minerals sit.
If you have jowar rava (broken jowar) instead, roast it dry for 3 to 4 minutes, make the same tempering, add 2.5 cups of hot water for every cup of rava and cook covered on low heat for 8 to 10 minutes, until the rava is soft; it will be softer and closer to porridge. Cooked whole jowar, cooled and put in the fridge within two hours, keeps for up to two days, so cook a double batch and use the rest for the salad or pulao in the jowar recipes roundup. Peas, beans or capsicum can replace the carrot.
Ingredient List
Serving Size:
1x
2x
3x
Grain
- Whole jowar (sorghum) grain — 1 cup
- Water, for pressure cooking — 3 cups
Tempering
- Groundnut oil — 1 1/2 tbsp
- Mustard Seeds — 1 tsp
- Urad dal (split, skinless) — 1 tsp
- Hing (asafoetida) — 1 pinch
- Fresh curry leaves — 10 leaves
- Green chillies, slit — 2 pieces
- Ginger, finely chopped — 1 tsp
Vegetables
- Onion, finely chopped — 1 medium
- Carrot, finely diced — 1 small
- Turmeric Powder — 1/4 tsp
- Salt — 1 tsp
To finish
- Lemon juice — 1 tbsp
- Fresh coriander leaves, chopped — 2 tbsp
- Roasted groundnuts — 20 g
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Serving Suggestions
Serve jowar upma hot. Coconut chutney is the usual partner, though a spoon of thick curd or an extra squeeze of lemon does the job too, and raw onion rings with a slit green chilli suit anyone who wants more heat. It is filling enough to be a full breakfast on its own, and because the grains stay separate it packs well for a lunchbox and eats well at room temperature. A glass of buttermilk alongside cools the chilli.
Tips for Cooking Jowar upma
Soak the grain for at least 8 hours; this decides both the cooking time and the texture. Cook it in fresh water, not the soaking water, and drain well before it goes into the pan or the upma turns wet. Keep the tempering on medium heat so the mustard seeds pop without the urad dal burning. Add salt in two stages, a pinch in the cooker and the rest in the pan, so the grains season through.
Chef’s Note
Buy whole jowar that is uniform, cream to pale yellow, with no black or shrivelled grains, and rinse it well because the bran holds dust. Cooked this way, one serving comes to about 324 kcal, 8.2 g protein and 7.5 g fibre. The grain supplies the bulk of that protein and fibre, while the fat is mostly the tempering oil. Leave out the groundnuts and the figure drops to about 289 kcal.
Per serving (approx.): 324 kcal, protein 8.2 g, carbs 46 g, fat 11 g, fibre 7.5 g. Computed from IFCT 2017 / USDA values for the listed quantities. Measures: 1 cup = 240 ml, 1 tbsp = 15 ml, 1 tsp = 5 ml.
Happy Cooking
!!
ByCOWBERRY
Jul 12, 2026
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