Calories in Lemon Rice

The recipe is one plate made from 80 g of raw rice, 25 g of peanuts, 30 g of lemon and 1 tablespoon of oil for the tempering. That is a full meal's worth of rice with a generous fistful of peanuts, the sort of plate eaten as a complete lunch, not the small mound served as one item on a banana-leaf meal or packed as a snack. A smaller helping scales down in step: half the plate is 282 kcal. Of the 13 rice dishes in this set of recipes, this is the heaviest.

Carbohydrate supplies 50% of the energy and fat 41%, a much larger fat share than a pulao has; protein supplies 10%. The rice provides the carbohydrate. The fat has two sources, the tablespoon of oil and the peanuts, which are an oily nut and are fried in that oil until crisp. The peanuts are also the reason the plate has 13.6 g of protein and 8.1 g of fibre, more than rice alone would give. Lemon juice, turmeric, curry leaves and mustard seeds give the dish its character and add almost no energy. In short, the lemon is not what makes lemon rice heavy; the peanuts and oil are.

A plate is about 27% of a sedentary man's daily energy requirement and 34% of a woman's, the largest share of any rice dish in the set. It is usually eaten on its own or with a little curd, pickle or papad, and with 13.6 g of protein it holds up as a one-dish lunch better than plain rice does. What it has little of is vegetables. A bowl of curd and a vegetable side fill that gap; two plates would be 1,126 kcal and 50.2 g of fat.

Lemon rice looks light because it is plain yellow rice with no gravy, yet in this set it is the heaviest plate at 563 kcal. Fat supplies 41% of that. The rice is salted as well, and the pickle and papad commonly eaten with it add more salt. People asked to watch salt or fat for blood pressure or a heart condition should go by what their doctor or dietitian has advised.