Cracked Wheat Pongal

Cracked Wheat Pongal


Now that Dashera is over, and although I planned on posting more sweet recipes, just managed to post 3 but I think they were enough to spoil ourselves. This recipe on the contrary is a healthy one because it uses broken whole wheat and note refined semolina/sooji. It also has dal/lentil and this combined with wholegrain is a dish that will keep you full for longer and is very beneficial to diabetics as well. If you desire, you could add some vegetables like carrot, peas, capsicum etc. To the wheat and lentil and pressure cook. I chose not to as I was having it with gothsu that has a decent amount of vegetables. If you like this dish, you could roast and powder the lentil upfront and even mix it with wheat rava and keep it like a ready mix so you could get going with the dish very quickly. It can make a great breakfast or dinner when you want to avoid rice. Here is the recipe...

1 cup wheat rava
¼ cup toor dal (pigeon peas)
1 teaspoon cumin seeds
1 teaspoon mustard seeds
5-10 black peppercorns
Few curry leaves
Cashew nuts, if desired
Salt to taste
Cooking oil

Roast the toor dal until it just begins to change colour, cool and grind to coarse powder, similar to wheat rava

Mix the wheat rava and ground toor dal and some curry leaves. Add water to come to two inches above the mixture and pressure cook for 3 whistles

Roast the cumin seeds and peppercorns until they start popping, cool and crush coarsely

Heat little oil, fry cashew nuts and keep aside. Then add mustard seeds, once it crackles, add the crushed cumin and peppercorn, curry leaves and fry for a couple of minutes

Add the cooked wheat rava and toor dal mixture, add required salt and mix well. You could turn the flame off after the previous step itself. Also mix the cashew nuts or garnish on top at the end.

Serve hot