Khichdi is the quintessential North Indian comfort food, among others like rajma-chawal, dal-chawal, and kadhi-chawal. It’s what they eat when they crave comfort food, or when you need warmth during the cold winter months 🙂 This dish is very versatile in that it tastes great plain, with spices, and with as many or as little vegetables as you’d like. Plain Khichdi is also excellent food to eat when you are sick, as it is easily digestible (due to the moong dal being easy on the stomach). With the rice, lentils and vegetables, it makes an incredibly balanced and nutritious meal, packed with carbs, protein and fibre in good quantities.
Making this with ghee not only kicks up the flavor, it is also good fat and is said to be nutritious for the body (in small quantities). Also, this is a one pot meal which is quite convenient, and you can vary the water quantity depending on how thick or runny you want the Khichdi to be. I have used very minimal spices, which is how I like it. This can be made soup-style or can be made the thicker style, like I have today, for lunch or for dinner. I served this Khichdi with a nice dollop of ghee, along with Cucumber-Mint Raita and Potato Fry for lunch.
Read on for the recipe!
Ingredients
- Mixed vegetables – 1 cup ( I used cauliflower, green peas, carrots & capsicum)
- Onion – 1 , sliced lengthwise
- Tomato – 1, sliced lengthwise
- Rice – 1 cup ( I used Basmati)
- Split moong dal – 1 cup (or any dal of your choice, you can even use mixed dal)
- Oil or Ghee – 2 tsp
- Jeera – 1 tsp
- Green chillies – 2 to 3, split lengthwise
- Garlic – 5 to 6 pods, finely chopped
- Kashmiri Lal Mirch (Red Chilli powder) – 1/2 tsp
- Turmeric powder – 1/4 tsp
- Sugar – 1/2 tsp
- Salt to taste
Measure out the rice..
and the dal
Take the dal and rice together in a vessel, and wash them under running water, until the water runs clean. It took me 2-3 washes.
Drain the water carefully and set aside the rice+dal mixture.
- Heat oil in a pan.
- Add jeera, allow it to splutter.
- Add green chillies and sauté for a few seconds.
- Add the sliced onions and garlic
- Sauté well, until onions turn translucent and raw smell of garlic is gone
- Add the vegetables.
- Mix the vegetables well.
- Add turmeric and red chili powder
- Mix well. Add some water at this stage (about a tbsp), to prevent the masala from sticking to the bottom of the cooker.
- Add tomatoes
- Mix well until tomatoes are slightly mushy – it will take about 1-2 mins.
- Measure out 3.5 cups of water (1.5 for the rice, 1.5 for the dal, and 0.5 for veggies) and add to the cooker. Add the rice and dal mixture to this
Add salt and sugar, mix well. Taste the water, it should be slightly salty. It will even out perfectly once the chichi is cooked.
Allow this mixture to develop a slight boil. Close the lid of the cooker and cook without the weight, on medium flame, for 15-18 minutes. Switch off the stove.
Open the lid of the cooker, add 1/2 tbsp ghee, and mix well. Close the lid of the cooker again and let it rest for 5 mins. It will cook further in the retained heat and flavors will develop well.
Enjoy!!
a burst of flavor 