No Rice Tamil Nadu Breakfast Thali ~ Simple Delicious Food Recipes

No Rice Tamil Nadu Breakfast Thali features traditional breakfast dishes like Idli, Dosa, Paniyaram, Ven Pongal and Sakkarai Pongal prepared with different Millets.

Tamil Nadu is famous for the different dishes like Idli, Dosa, Paniyaram, Ven Pongal and Sakkarai Pongal. A typical South Indian Breakfast would feature any of these if not most of it. It is quite common to have a combination of Idli, Pongal and Vada with the different side dishes made for Breakfast.

While on regular weekday or weekend one would do Ven Pongal, Vada combo, the Idli Vada combo is also very popular. When my SILs visit us with their families, we always plan from elaborate breakfast dishes that would always be Idli, Dosa, Vada along with Kesari and the different side dishes like Sambar, Chutneys or another combination like Ven Pongal, Vada with Kesari.

Traditional Breakfast Thali on a mini scale will be like this with Idli, Vada and Sambar combination. Second would be with Pongal Combination. You can pick any of the easy to make chutneys from the huge collection of Tiffin Chutneys.

My Parents have been following the tradition of inviting Dad’s staff for New Year’s Breakfast. Over the years, this tradition shifted to brunch with Nonveg dishes included as well. I normally go over to help Amma with the cooking and people used to drop in at different times starting at 7 in the morning.

So though the same dishes are prepared at everybody’s home and ours too, making on these special occasions with so many different dishes surely makes it a grand affair.

Rice Free Breakfast Dishes:

Finally while planning on my breakfast thalis, I remembered Nalini sharing a No Rice Breakfast thali and I wanted to do something similar. Millets are a regular feature in my cuisine. Athamma always has Thinai mixed with her rice or most times cooked separately for her lunch. Some of the regular millets we use are Ragi, Bajra and Jowar in different meals.

Certaining adding on other millets like Little Millet, Banyard Millet, Kodo Millet wasn’t so difficult. I have over 70 plus recipes with different Millets. While I competely replace some Rice dishes, our regular lunch is a mix of some millet with rice to get the whole family to slowly get used to the millets.

For a previous theme, I had made a mini tiffin thali a popular concept in Tamil Nadu, where mini size Idlis, dosas, pooris, small cups of Ven pongal, sweet is offered in the thali with various side dishes. I have a Thali with Oats as the main grain used for preparing different dishes.

Completely replacing the rice and making the whole thali was an idea I have been having for a while. I was so happy when I finally cooked everything and everybody loved it. Of course, we were so full that we had to skip lunch!

In today’s Thali, I have featured Kuthiraivali Paniyaram.

No Rice Tamil Nadu Breakfast Thali

Rice Free Tamil Nadu Breakfast Thali

Kuthiraivali Paniyaram
Samai Idli
Varagarisi Dosa
Thinai Ven Pongal
Varagarisi Sakkarai Pongal
Brinjal Sambar
Tomato chutney
Peanut Chutney
Mint Chutney
Coconut Chutney
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