Finger millet

Ragi is the edible small grain of Eleusine coracana, an annual cereal grass in the Poaceae family. You’ll find it as intact whole grain, milled into fine whole-meal flour, and flattened into flakes.

It’s called Ragi in Kannada; Kelvaragu or Keppai in Tamil; Ragulu in Telugu; Nachni in Marathi; Mandia in Odia; Mandua in Hindi; and Nagli in Gujarati.

Finger millet has a robust, mildly astringent, earthy taste. When you roast it or cook it with fat, it turns fragrant and pleasantly nutty with a deep toasted note.

For flatbreads and batters, mix ragi flour with hot water or into fermented batter for rotis, dosas, and idlis. In Uttarakhand, ground mandua flour is kneaded into rustic mandua ki roti.

For porridges and dumplings, stir the flour straight into boiling water to form a thick porridge or dense steamed dumplings. That’s your ragi mudde, eaten with spicy saaru or sambar.

For sweets and drinks, roast the flour in ghee and sweeten for halwa or laddus. Cooked or sprouted ragi meal can be thinned with water or buttermilk for daily beverages, and fermented ragi porridge called ragi koozh or ambali is widely consumed.

Karnataka is India’s leading finger millet producer, contributing nearly 60 percent of cultivation area and output. Tamil Nadu is a prominent producer in the south, and Maharashtra and Odisha are key growing states. Uttarakhand is a major producer with traditional cultivation across the Kumaon and Garhwal hill terraces. The region also has a GI-tagged crop, Uttarakhand Mandua.

About 344 mg calcium per 100 g, the richest among common cereal grains.