Green Mungbean Soup
courtesy of Pabla Indian Cuisine

Serves: 4
Preparation Time: 45 minutes

Ingredients

• 1 cup green mung beans - soaked overnight
• 2 cup water + 1 tsp. salt- to cook beans in pressure cooker
• 2 cup water - to achieve the soup
• 1 tbs. sunflower oil
• ½ tsp. mustard seeds
• ¼ tsp. Hing (known as Asefoetida in the West)
• 1 bay leaf
• 1/2 tsp. tumeric
• 1 tsp. mixed Cumin and Coriander Powder
• 1 1/2 tsp. ginger - chopped
• 1/2 tsp. garlic - chopped
• 2 tsp. salt
• 1 1/2 tsp. lemon juice
• 1 tsp. raw sugar cane
• 1 pinch garam masala powder

Preparation

1. Soak the mung beans overnight in water.
2. Clean and finely grind ginger and garlic
3. Drain the mung beans, wash them two times and cook in a pressure cooker with the indicated amount of water until tender. It takes around 25 minutes, according to your pressure cooker. The beans have to be broken.
4. Heat the oil in large deep saucepan and add mustard seeds. When mustard seeds pop, add hing and bay leaf. Mix well.
5. Place the cooked beans - including the cooked water plus fresh water - into the saucepan.
6. Bring to a boil and add all remaining spices. Simmer the mung beans for a few minutes more.

Benefits of Mung Bean Soup

In Ayurveda, Mung Bean Soup has a magical and powerful effect! It helps to balance all 3 doshas. Its spices are part of the medicinal quality of this delicious and nourishing soup. When combined with certain sharp and penetrating herbs, the blocks created by Aam (toxic mucus that lodges in the body over time due to poor diet, lack of exercise and wrong lifestyle) are broken. In the same way that a gun is able to shoot through objects and break them, some herbs and spices have this effect. Mung bean Soup contains many of these spices.

Mung Bean Soup Cure

It is beneficial to fast on Mung Bean Soup. One can start, depending on the amount of Aam in the body, with 3-5 days of fasting only on Mung Bean Soup. Then add cooked vegetables like pumpkins and squashes, and leafy greens for two days. Finally, add rice for the next two days. And then return to your normal diet. You can also do mung soup fasting for half a day if you feel you have eaten something very heavy. Your next meal could be mung bean soup and even that is beneficial to give the body a rest and eliminate unwanted toxins.