Breakfast Staple · Steamed Rice Cylinder
Puttu & Kadala Curry
Photo: Jackson John 10 / Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 4.0
Puttu's name simply means 'portioned' in Malayalam, and one of its oldest legends comes from the 16th-century Tamil text Thiruvilayadal Puranam, where Lord Ganesha disguised himself as a laborer, helped an elderly puttu vendor, and asked to be paid in crumbled bits of puttu — an offering still echoed at Madurai's Meenakshi temple today.
Ground rice is layered with grated coconut inside a perforated cylindrical steamer and cooked over boiling water until it sets into a soft, crumbly log. It's tipped out onto a plate and served with a spiced black chickpea curry, ripe banana, or a meat stew, sold hot from breakfast stalls across Kerala.
Why it's made this way: Puttu's earliest known references are Tamil, appearing in 15th- and 16th-century devotional texts before Kerala made it a household breakfast staple, and its steam-cylinder method paired with kadala curry has become the state's standard morning plate, sold from tea shops the moment they open.
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