Mung Bean & Rice Curry with Fresh Cheese
Mung beans are the cutest beans you can imagine! They’re my latest little favorite finds in the Grains & Legumes department. I’ve been wanting to make a dish with them ever since an Indian friend made a wonderfully simple lunch for us involving mung beans, paneer cheese, and cauliflower. I hadn’t had mung beans before, but they reminded me of lentils…except that the mung beans are even more deeply flavorful than their flatter, smaller lentil cousins.
Despite their relatively small size, however, dry mung beans do take at least 45 minutes to cook. (Red lentils cook in as few as 5 minutes.) The 45-minute time frame turns out to make mung beans the perfect pair with brown rice, though, since the latter also needs about 45 minutes of simmering time to be tender to the tooth.
Thanks to the beans, rice, and spices, this recipe is fragrant and hearty, plus it’s even better left over than it is the first time around. And don’t let the cooking time throw you off — once you’ve done your initial sautéeing and added the rest of your ingredients, you can let the curry chug along on the stove and finish making itself.
Mung Bean & Rice Curry
This serves 4 as a main course and can easily be doubled.
2 large onions, chopped
4 medium tomatoes, chopped
1 large bell pepper or 2 small peppers, chopped
2″ piece of fresh ginger, peeled and minced
1 cup mung beans*
2 c. chicken stock, preferably from pastured chickens
1/2 cup raw brown rice
2 tsp. turmeric
2 tsp. cumin
2 tsp. mustard seeds
1 tsp. sea salt (or less, depending on the saltiness of the broth)
In a large soup pot, sautée onions in 1 T. extra-virgin olive oil or coconut oil over medium heat for 5 minutes or until onions are beginning to turn translucent. Add tomatoes, peppers, and ginger and cook for another 3 minutes. Add the remaining ingredients, stir, and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to a simmer, cover, and let curry cook for about 45 minutes, stirring it occasionally and checking to see if there’s enough liquid in the pot to continue cooking the beans and rice. If the mixture starts looking dry, add another 1/2 cup of broth (or water) to prevent the curry from scorching onto the bottom of the pot.
When the rice and beans are tender to your tooth, remove the curry from the heat and serve. I spooned mine over some fresh mozzarella cheese, but you could simply eat it as it is, serve it over chicken, or serve it alongside mixed sautéed vegetables.
Enjoy!
* If you don’t have mung beans, you can substitute lentils for the mung beans. Just add lentils at the appropriate time during the simmering process: since the rice will take about 45 minutes, calculate backwards to figure out when to add the lentils. If they’re red lentils, add them during the final 5 minutes of cooking the curry; if they’re standard brown or green lentils, add them during the final 20 minutes of cooking.
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Tags: brown rice, curry, ginger root, indian, mung beans
