This creamy moong dal recipe with spinach and mushrooms is a great weekday meal accompanied by green salad and rice or pasta.
What I love about this recipe:
- creamy and delicious
- super easy to make
- perfect for batch-cooking
As far as dietary restrictions go, this recipe is vegan and plant-based, gluten-free, quite low in fats (20% from kcal), Candida diet friendly, low glycemic, nut-free, soy-free, grain-free, and peanut-free.
How to Make Creamy Moong Dal Recipe
You’ll need only easy-to-get ingredients to make this moong dal recipe. Here’s how it goes!
The Ingredients
The main ingredient is evidently yellow moong dal. However, if it’s hard to get, use split peas instead.
Moong dal refers to mung beans with husk removed and split in half, so moong dal and split mung beans are the same thing. Moong dal will have slightly less dietary fibre, and will cook faster than whole mung beans.
The other difference is that moong dal melts away in the pot but mung beans retain their shape even when cooked to complete softness. Remember, if you use split peas, you’d need to cook them longer and they wouldn’t melt away like moong dal does.
Benefits of Moong Dal
Here are a few benefits of eating mung beans:
- rich in vitamins, minerals, fibre, and protein.
- high antioxidant content.
- can lower LDL cholesterol [source]
Then come the usual suspects of a moong dal i.e., onion, garlic, ginger, carrot, and bay leaves.
I chose to add some extra creaminess as well as sweetness and added sweet potato.
Next, mushrooms and baby spinach make this dal recipe complete.
And last but not least, coconut milk and curry paste for authentic Indian flavours. If you can’t get curry paste, use curry powder or ground homemade Indian spice mix.
The Directions
Start by soaking moong dal overnight or for at least 6 hours (it’ll reduce the cooking time significantly). Rinse and drain. If you start with 250g dry, you’ll end up with about 460g soaked.
Next, chop the onion, garlic, ginger, carrot, and sweet potato.
Then, put the soaked moong dal along with everything you just chopped, add a few bay leaves as well and pour it over with 540g of hot water. Bring to boil and simmer for 15 minutes stirring occasionally.
While the dal is simmering, chop the mushrooms and sauté them. Simply fry them dry mixing occasionally. It will take about 5 minutes, but water starts to separate.
Also while the dal is cooking: mix the curry paste with some hot water to get an homogeneous mixture. Add coconut milk and give it a good stir.
Now, when the dal has been cooking for 15 minutes, add the coconut-curry paste mixture and stir well. Cook for another 5 minutes until the moong dal is nice and soft. Turn off the heat and just let it be for about 5 minutes before you remove the lid.
Mix in the sautéed mushrooms.
If you can, wait for the dal to cool down a bit before you stir in the baby spinach to avoid it from over-wilting and becoming brownish in colour.
Serving Tips For My Moong Dal Recipe
- A nice big green salad made of lettuce, some fresh baby spinach, red cabbage etc will go perfectly with this dal.
- As for the grain part, you can choose between rice, whole grain pasta, simple cooked whole grains, sourdough bread, or rice noodles.
How to Store
If you have any leftovers, store it in a sealed container or a jar for up to 5 days. And be ready to add some water or plant milk to it as it’ll be much thicker the next day.
By the way, I didn’t stop here but created an easy-to-follow recipe video on how to make this moong dal recipe! Check it out!
If you like Indian food or curries and stews in general, you might want to check out the following recipes:
- Savoury Indian Spiced Curry Porridge
- Cauliflower and Pumpkin Curry
- Red Lentil and Moong Dal Recipe with Pumpkin
- Millet and Lentil Dal
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Creamy Moong Dal Recipe
- Total Time: 35 minutes
- Yield: 5–6 portions 1x
- Diet: Vegan
Description
This creamy moong dal recipe with spinach and mushrooms is a great weekday meal accompanied by green salad and rice or pasta.
Soak time: 6-8 hours
Ingredients
- 250g (8.8oz) yellow moong dal
- 1 medium onion
- 3 garlic cloves
- 6g (0.2oz) piece of ginger
- 1 carrot
- 1/2 (135g, 4.8oz) sweet potato
- 200g (7oz) button mushrooms
- 100g (3.5oz) baby spinach
- 130g (4.6oz) coconut milk (18%)
- 1 tbsp curry paste + 40g (1.4oz) water
- 1 tsp turmeric
- 540g (19oz) water
Instructions
- Start by soaking moong dal overnight of for at least 6 hours (it’ll reduce the cooking time significantly). Rinse and drain. If you start with 250g dry, you’ll end up with about 460g soaked.
- Chop the onion, garlic, ginger, carrot, and sweet potato.
- Put the soaked moong dal along with everything you just chopped (see step 2), add a few bay leaves as well and pour it over with 540g of hot water. Bring to boil and simmer for 15 minutes stirring occasionally.
- While the dal is simmering, chop the mushrooms and sauté them. Simply fry them dry mixing occasionally. It will take about 5 minutes, but water starts to separate.
- Also while the dal is cooking: mix the curry paste with some hot water to get an homogeneous mixture. Add coconut milk and give it a good stir.
- Now, when the dal has been cooking for 15 minutes, add the coconut-curry paste mixture and stir well. Cook for another 5 minutes until the moong dal is nice and soft. Turn off the heat and just let it be for about 5 minutes before you remove the lid.
- Mix in the sautéed mushrooms.
- If you can, wait for the dal to cool down a bit before you stir in the baby spinach to avoid it from over-wilting and becoming brownish in colour.
Notes
Feel free to use more curry paste if you’re okay with the spiciness.
If you can’t get curry paste, use curry powder or ground homemade Indian spice mix.
If you want to make this moong dal even lower in fats, add less coconut milk.
If you have any leftovers, store it in a sealed container or a jar for up to 5 days. And be ready to add some water or plant milk to it as it’ll be much thicker the next day.
- Prep Time: 15 minutes
- Cook Time: 20 minutes
- Method: Stovetop
- Cuisine: Indian
Nutrition
- Serving Size: 1/5 of the recipe
- Calories: 274 kcal
- Sugar: 7.4g
- Sodium: 130.44mg
- Fat: 6.1g
- Saturated Fat: 4.1g
- Carbohydrates: 44.3g
- Fiber: 5.7g
- Protein: 15.2g
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