Kitchadi – The Dish Representative of Ayurveda.
This dish forms a part of all cleanses,detox plans and nourishing plans in Ayurveda. Made of rice and yellow split mung beans, various spices and herbs, it’s very wholesome, nourishing and packed with nutrients. Yellow split mung beans are known as one of the only vegetarian sources of complete proteins.
Kitchadi is also comfort food for many when they have been ill, suffering from a flu sore throat or cough. When made in a more mushy form children can also enjoy it.
Following here below is a very traditional menu that I learnt growing up from my mum, aunts and various family members who followed Ayurveda on a daily basis.
Ingredients:
- Yellow split mung beans 1 cup
- White Basmati Rice – 1 cup
- Ghee – 2 tablespoon
- Turmeric
- Asafoetida
- Curry Leaves (if available) – 4 leaves
- Cumin seeds – ½ teaspoon
- Mustard seeds – ½ teaspoon
- Green chillies whole – 2 (you can chop them if you want to)
- Fresh chopped ginger – ½ inch
- Fresh garlic chopped – 3 pods
- Jaggery – 1 teaspoon
- Coriander – chopped
- Lettuce leaves (optional) – 4 -5 leaves
- Salt to taste
Soak yellow split mung beans in hot water for 15 minutes. If you were to soak in quite hot water, then you won’t have to soak overnight as many recipes suggest.
Soak rice in room temperature water for 15 minutes.
With 1 cup yellow split mung beans, add 1 teaspoon turmeric, pinch-full asafoetida along with 2 cups of water and boil it in a pressure cooker for 15 minutes. If you don’t have a pressure cooker, then boil in a sauce pan, making sure the lid is shut airtight with something heavy on top of lid to prevent steam from escaping. When the mund daal is boiled, it should be quite soft. Keep this aside.
Directions:
1. Heat the Ghee until very hot.
Then add:
- Curry leaves
- Asafoetida – pinchful
- Cumin seeds
- Mustard seeds
- Green chillies
- Chopped ginger
- Chopped garlic
2. Stir for one minute.
3. Add the rice and 1 teaspoon turmeric and stir for 5 minutes. Shut with a lid
4. Add the mung beans and stir for 3 minutes.
5. Add 2 cups of water (double amount of rice taken)
6. Let it come to a boil and then simmer it down.
7. Add jaggery and salt, stir well. Cover with a lid and let the rice cook. The rice should be cooked in 10 minutes or so.
8. Towards the end when the rice is almost cooked, sprinkle chopped coriander over the Kitchadi. Then layer it with lettuce leaves. Shut with lid so that the lettuce leaves are steamed with the heat.
9. Remove from heat, let it settle down for 5 minutes or so and there you go, traditional Kitchadi is ready to be eaten!