South Asian Lentil Sambar, and some mixed veg, for lunch.
Love sambar.
This looks delicious. Do you have a recipe?
Easiest way is buy MTR Sambar Soup Ready mix. It has the ground sambar spice and ground lentils ready to go. But you can just buy the spice only pack or start from scratch with Sambar spices and add your own lentils. For adding lentils usually you cook a few spoons down in boiling water and then mush them up like a paste.
Heat oil in a pot and saute onions, garlic, carrots and potatoes, and a chopped chilli pepoer or two if your spice pack is not already a hot one. Throw in green peppers and it all cook a bit with the lid on and stir occasionally. Once things have started to soften you can toss in a two handfuls of cherry tomamtoes, and cook those down. Before you start burning the veg in the pot add water (and lentils) to make the soup. Bring it up to a boil and add the spicemix. And let it simmer. MTR mix is 8 water to 1 measure of spicemix. You can add more if you like and it will go from thinner broth to a thicker consistency, but if you over spice it the spices will taste gritty and the flavour gets messed up. Simmer for 10 minutes, if you want to add frozen peas toss them in about halfway in the simmering.
Add salt to taste.
If you don’t want to cook down tomatoes you can add some tomato sauce during the simmer. About half cup to a cup of sauce depending on pot size you are making. Or a large heaping spoim of tomato paste works too.
Ideally it comes out less like a tomato soup, and the veg and spice mix are the main source of taste.
Okay two questions, do I soak the lentils before or am I using dried?
Am I cutting the tomatoes first?
Not sure where to find the spice mix, but I may just find a recipe for that. I love finding out what goes into things, it helps me cook better in the future.
Also, a really good write up. Thank you a bunch for getting back to me!
Depends on the lentil, I think usually its toor daal which looks similar to yellow split peas. You don’t have to presoak if its they proper daal as they will break down pretty quick if you boil/simmer them and mash.
Red lentils you could try also.
Green and Black lentils though won’t breakdown easily. Black ones would need soaking for sure and even then they retain their
If you use small cherry or grape tomatoes you usually don’t have to chop them as they’ll break down if you toss them in with the veg near the end of the saute work. But if they are hard or large tomatoes you can chop them. But if they are chopped I don’t throw them in at the beginning of saute because the acid in the tomatoes stops the potatoes cooking nicely
Making it now with what I had on hand. My house smells amazing!
Nice, did you have spices to make a sambar mix?
If my research is correct, it’s cumin, chilli powder, coriander seeds, and Tumeric. All items I had on hand except coriander seeds. I did have cilantro which is the leaves
Awesome!
You are awesome thanks!!
Looks good but that wide brimmed bowl would immediately be printing receipts showing what a messy eater I am…
There’s a reason the spoon handle is cropped out, that side had the mess
Lol makes sense. They say some of the greatest minds were quite messy people, so we have that to cling onto.
That looks amazing! What is the green veg? Zucchini?
Green Pepper
Is the plate to soup ratio done on purpose for serving size reasons?
They are a regular soup dishs, the rim looks wider than usual from being so close to the camera, and the camera not picking up the radius that transitions into the bowl shape
