Simple Gujarati Khichdi

          Khichdi, a healthy and tasty dish with rice and lentils, it's an easy dish, that can be put together in no time. It's somewhat similar to the south Indian Pongal, and there are different versions to it, Bengali, Rajasthani, just the rice and lentils, or sometimes with vegetables. Today's version is the simple Gujarati Khichdi. My family loves this when served with some kadhi ( my next post ), serve some sauteed vegetables on the side for a complete and nutritious meal..

Need To Have

• Rice - 3/4 cup
• Split Moong Dal With Skin - 3/4 cup
• Cinnamon - 1 small stick
• Cloves - 2
• Cumin Seeds - 1 teaspoon
• Black Pepper - 1/2 teaspoon
• Turmeric Powder - 1/4 teaspoon
• Salt to taste

Method

          Rinse the rice and dal together and keep. Heat some oil and ghee in a pressure pan or cooker, add the cinnamon and cloves, when the cloves start popping, add the cumin seeds and the peppercorns.

          After half a minute, add the rice and dal mixture and mix for a minute. Now add the water ( in the ratio, for 2 cups of rice and dal mixture, add 6 cups + 1cup water, that is 3 times the measure of rice and dal and 1 times the measure of rice ), turmeric powder and salt, cover and cook until one whistle, then reduce the heat to lowest and cook for another 10 minutes. Remove the lid, mix, if needed add some more ghee and serve warm with the kadhi.

Note
You can do the entire cooking in a regular pot too, it'll take more time.
Can use the husked moong dal, but the one with the skin has more fiber.
Moong Dal is Green Gram, if you don't want, you can use only oil, but ghee gives the nice flavor, you can also add a couple of cardamoms along with the cloves.

Here are some more khichdi varieties :

Cauliflower And Capsicum Khichdi with broken wheat and lentils.
Cabbage Pongal, a south Indian version of khichdi.