If you are looking for a great dish that is easy to prepare and extremely flavorful, look no further than this pumpkin kootu recipe. Kootu is a type of stew made from veggies and lentils that sits somewhere between a sambar and a curry in terms of consistency. Pumpkin makes the kootu a little bit less savory than your traditional sambar due to the natural sweetness contained inside the pumpkin which translates into yumminess.
Health Benefits
The word ‘pumpkin’ includes a wide variety of gourds or squash plants. Although there are major differences between the different varieties of pumpkin, they more or less have similar health benefits. Most pumpkins have the ability to encourage weight loss, strengthen bones, protect a person’s vision, and even increase fertility. They also tend to have pretty high antioxidant numbers, which helps the pumpkins to kill free radicals that can cause cancer.
Ingredients
3 cups yellow pumpkin - finely chopped
1/4 cup cooked moong dal
¼ tsp coconut – grated
½ tsp cumin seeds
¼ tsp turmeric
salt to taste
How To Make Pumpkin Kootu
- Pressure cook moong dal.
- Chop the yellow pumpkin.
- Add the pumpkin and water to immerse the yellow pumpkin (a little less than that, to be precise)
- Add turmeric and salt
- Cook until soft.
- Grind coconut with cumin seeds.
- Stir in the ground coconut and cooked dal.
- Mix well.
- Boil for 2 mins in medium flame.
- Temper with the items listed under “For Tempering” in order.
- Mix with kootu.
Trivia
The word 'pumpkin' is derived from the Greek word, 'pepon', which means large melon.