Mung Beans Are Sexy
And the perfect base for a high-protein, savory breakfast.
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I’m won’t lie: I feel sexiest when I’m consistently eating mung beans. Mung beans are a functional vegetable, quite affordable, and best sprouted, which is remarkably easy to do. It all started when I absorbed the aphorism that we should eat like our ancestors. I thought: why not start by eating like my family that’s alive? My Indian family loves mung beans. They love beans of every kind. They soak them, sprout them, and cook them up into delicious sabji, a Hindi word that means cooked vegetables.
Mung beans are little green beans the size of a breadcrumb. They come from India but proliferate across Asia — they are pedestrian and medicinal cuisine in Vietnam and China, too. The mung bean is called a functional vegetable. In classical Ayurvedic philosophy, it’s considered daily medicine. This is because mung beans…
Contain neuroprotective polyphenols (think Alzheimer’s disease)
Are an affordable, sustainable protein: 20-30% protein by weight (double that of wheat and three times that of rice)
Boast a ton of amino acids, which help our bodies make protein and digest food
It seems that, in the health discourse, beans ebb in and out of fashion. One second they’re the solution to our over dependence on factory-farmed meat, the next they’re chockfull of toxic lectins that will sabotage whatever health gains you think you’re making. Bean-phobia, it turns out, goes back to the ancients: The Greek mathematician Pythagoras believed that beans contained the souls of the dead. “Eating fava beans and gnawing on the heads of one’s parents are one and the same,” an Orphic saying went. (Sounds like “eating like your ancestors” lost in translation to me).
It turns out that, while beans and legumes do contain lectins — a protein that can cause inflammation and indigestion — all plants have lectins. Beans just have a bit more. But none of this really matters, because cooking beans destroys lectins anyway, even more so if the beans are sprouted.
My gateway to mung beans was a trip to India last year. The women in my family prepare all variety of pulses: I was eating pulses for breakfast, pulses for lunch, pulses for dinner. Often sprouted, always satisfying. When I returned to the States I wanted to continue on my bean journey, but we simply don’t have the same variety.
We do, however, have mung beans. Mung beans are easy to find in the States, even where I live in Montana. I buy them organic and in bulk. They sell them at the local employee-owned supermarket, at the food coop, at Whole Foods, and probably elsewhere.
My favorite way to prepare mung beans is the way my aunties do: soaking them, sprouting them, and finally cooking them in a simple mélange of ghee, mustard seeds, turmeric, salt, water, and chili powder. I try to eat enough protein at breakfast to avert a blood sugar rollercoaster throughout the day, and mung beans are great for that. I’m not a vegetarian by any means — other days I eat venison or bison for breakfast — but mung beans are a favorite. Preparing them reminds me of my aunties, makes me feel kinship with my mom, who might be soaking or straining mung beans of her own, hundreds of miles away. But mostly, eating mung beans makes me feel sexy: energized, satisfied, light on my feet.
Though the mung bean calls South Asia home (same), the sturdy little crop spent 4,500 years wandering far from home (also same), sweeping China, Mongolia, Afghanistan, Iran and Russia. As a wanderer, the mung bean is cooked globally in a million ways; below I share two — one Indian and one American. I eat both for breakfast depending on the season and mood. All of the recipes below are savory (though a common Indian sweet treat is mung bean halwa). If you haven’t yet heard the life-changing magic of a savory breakfast, it’s never too late…
How to sprout mung beans:
1. Place 1-2 cups dry mung beans in a bowl with water. Cover with clean kitchen towel. Let sit on countertop for 8 hours or overnight.
2. Drain water through sieve. Rinse bowl and dry. Return mung beans to the bowl, cover with a kitchen towel, and let sit again for 8 hours or overnight.
I check on my beans periodically at this point. You’ll start to see little sprouts coming through the bottom of the bean. It’s like middle school science class!
3. After 8 hours — or however long you want to wait, just don’t exceed 24, from my experience — voila! Your mung beans are sprouted and ready to be cooked.
Mung Bean Sabji:
*for this recipe, you’ll use the whole mung bean, not the split. They should be oval and a lovely olive green.
1. Heat tablespoon of ghee in a pan. Once hot, add teaspoon of mustard seeds, a pinch of hing (omit if you don’t have).
2. Once the mustard seeds start to crack, add ¼ cup finely chopped onion
3. After a couple of minutes, add ¼ tsp turmeric and 1-2 tsp chili powder
4. Add the whole green mung beans, give it all a good stir, and then add enough water to barely cover.
5. Put lid on top and simmer on medium/low. Keep checking on it until the mung beans are soft to the bite.
6. When it’s soft to the bite, add salt and 1 tsp date paste (Indian OGs will use jaggery, but I prefer date), stir and eat.
If you think the mung bean is an Asian food staple only, think again. The best natural foods store in the U.S. is within driving distance from my house. I love their hot bar, which features homemade, local, whole-food breakfasts, lunches, and dinners for every diet imaginable. You can be gluten free and eat here. You can be vegan. Carnivore. You can be sugar-free. Seed oil free. You’ll find locally-ranched beef here. You can just be you and eat whatever you want without worrying about it. Aside from reading, writing, and gabbing, eating at FoodWorks is probably the greatest passion of my life. Erewhon couldn’t hold a candle.
Since FoodWorks loves to cater to all diets in our diet-confused world, their hot bar invariably features a vegan (& gluten free, might I add) breakfast sandwich, comprised of a vegan egg made with none other than — you guessed it — mung beans. I personally love real, orange-yolk eggs from the farm, but this is always an option, too.
And for those craving another savory, breakfast-friendly, and Indian take, Swasthi has a savory mung pancake that’s been on my to-do for a while now. If you try it, let me know in the comments how you get on. Swasthi knows what she’s doing and is not afraid to say so! ✦˚ *
I didn’t know mung beans were so accessible and so good for us! I am definitely trying out the breakfast recipe