Moonglet

You might also like these recipes for besan chilla, moong chilla and vegan omelet. Were you to order a moonglet (a moong bean omelet) from one of India’s street food vendors, they’d whip up an extraordinarily healthy slurry of moong beans and spices. Then, they’d add half a stick of butter to a pan, pour the moong bean slurry in, and fry it all up into a food so delicious, with crispy edges and a puff, airy texture, that you’d lick your fingers to stubs. But one of the great things about cooking street food at home is, you can cut out the stuff you don’t want (like that hunk of butter) and, with some ingenuity, still keep the dish extremely tasty. Today, I want to share with you my moonglet recipe, which is not just tasty, not just healthy, but amazingly kid friendly as well. Jay loves this moonglet so much, he’ll often request it for breakfast. It’s also an easy way to get your kids to eat lots of colorful, healthy veggies. But don’t just eat it for breakfast. It makes a great lunch or quick dinner as well.

Making a delicious moonglet at home

This recipe is pretty much a blank canvas. You add ingredients to the basic moong bean mixture to tweak it to your liking. That said, my recipe–the combination of ingredients I add here–is especially delicious and I’ve got a few tips and tricks to make sure this moonglet turns out as delicious as can be. So be sure to try it this way at least once. You will need to do a small step of prep work for this recipe, which is soaking the mung lentils for at least half an hour. Longer is fine, you can do the soaking the night before you plan to cook. Soaking the lentils help blend them into a smoother mixture. I like crispy edges on my moonglets, so I add a dash of brown rice to the lentils as they soak. The rice gives a nice crunch and adds more healthfulness. You don’t need the rice, but I’d strongly recommend it. Check to get new recipe updates by email.

I add a few ingredients to the blender when I whip up the moonglet batter–ginger, garlic and green chili peppers. You can add turmeric, although I don’t much care for it in here. A dash of baking soda gives the omelets a lovely, puffy and light texture, but if you don’t want to use it, leave it out by all means. You can add all sorts of veggies to the moonglet. I like bell peppers, onions, spring onions, shredded carrots, zucchini, shredded spinach, and herbs like cilantro and mint. Anything that doesn’t take a ton of time to cook would work. Try and use a cast iron skillet for this if possible, although a nonstick skillet works too. A cast iron skillet just gives those great, crispy edges that kids go gaga for.

Serve

You can eat it by itself, no need for anything on the side, although I’ll admit I sometimes like eating my mung bean omelet with a green chutney. Jay loves it with hot sauce. Ketchup works perfectly fine too.