Radish Sambar

Kuzhambu recipes, South Indian Lunch recipes, Women's Health Recipes

Radish (mullangi) sambar tastes as delicious as shallot (chinna vengayam) sambar as they both absorb the flavors of all the spices used in sambar. Hence I like to savour mullangi sambar not only with hot steaming rice but also with idli or dosa.

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Mullangi sambar

Mullangi sambar tastes good with aviyal and also it goes well with any kootu or poriyal regardless of being spicy or not. Here I have served radish sambar & rice with purple cabbage poriyal.

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Lunch with radish sambar & red cabbage poriyal

 Health Benefits of radish:

Radish is a good source of Vitamin C (provides immunity), potassium (controls BP), folic acid (needed for pregnant women) & also contains an anthocyanin, a powerful anti-oxidant. You may click here for its nutrient values published by US Dept. of Agriculture. Although we can enjoy the benefits of radish to the fullest by taking them raw as salad or juice, I have listed below some of the important health benefits. 

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Since 95% of radish is water we can take radish as a salad to keep us hydrated during summer. Besides, radish salad acts as a good appetiser & a mouth freshener.  Now let us prepare radish sambar or mullangi sambar as below and you may click here for my other kuzhambu recipes.

Radish Sambar Recipe:

Time taken: 30 min

Yields : 600 ml

Ingredients:

  1. Sesame oil or coconut oil – 1 tsp
  2. Asafoetida (hing) – a peanut sized block or Â¼ tsp powder
  3. Fenugreek seeds (vendhayam) – ½ tsp
  4. Red chillies – 2 Nos.
  5. Curry leaves – 1 sprig
  6. Tamarind juice extracted from a lemon-sized tamarind – 400 ml
  7. Turmeric powder – ½ tsp
  8. Red chilli powder – 1 tbsp (or Kashmiri chilli powder – 1 tsp)
  9. Radish (mullangi) – 2 Nos.
  10. Red gram (split pigeon pea or thuvaram paruppu) – ½ cup (100 g)
  11. Sambar powder – 1 tsp
  12. Salt – 1 tsp
  13. Chopped coriander leaves – a handful
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How to prepare radish sambar :

  • Wash lentils, soak them in water (1 cup) & set aside.
  • Peel & slice radish into discs and add into lentils.
  • Pressure cook lentils & radish after adding 1 cup of water (simmer for 10 min when it reaches high pressure).
  • Mash lentils well after keeping radish aside.
  • Extract tamarind juice (about 400 ml) and keep aside.
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  • Heat a cooking pan with oil.
  • Add asafoetida block, fenugreek seeds, red chillies & curry leaves one after another and fry them in low flame.
  • Pour tamarind juice and add turmeric powder & red chilli powder and bring it to a boil in medium flame.
  • Add cooked radish & salt (½ tsp) and let it boil for a minute.
  • Add cooked lentils & sambar powder.
  • When they start to boil again, cover the pot and simmer for 2 min.
  • Add remaining salt & chopped coriander leaves and stir well.
  • Remove from heat and keep the pan closed (allowing sambar to get infused with the spices) for 5 min.
  • Serve with rice, idli or dosa.
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Cooking Tips:

  • Radish may be cooked in tamarind juice rather than pressure cooking it along with lentils.
  • If you are using store-bought chilli powder that are really hot, you can reduce it to 1 tsp.
  • You may check out my sambar powder recipe here, it is useful to mask the sulphur odour of radish.
  • If you are using iodised salt it is always good to add salt just before turning off the stove to prevent iodine being vaporised.

Variations:

  • We can replace redgram (toor dal) with any other lentils like green gram (moong dal) or red lentil (masoor dal) for making sambar.
paruppu Radish Sambar
Paruppu used for making sambar
  • We may add any other vegetables shown in the picture below into sambar in the following combination:
  1. onion, carrot, beans, potato & tomato
  2. drumstick, brinjal, mango & shallot
  3. ladies finger, brinjal, any green leaves & shallot
  4. pumpkin, broad beans (avarai), brinjal & shallot
  5. bitter gourd, tomato & shallot
vege Radish Sambar
Vegetables used for making sambar

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  8. Hooray for radish! They’re rarely cooked in the US, which I think is a real shame. I love the textures and flavors that brings out, but I usually roast mine. I’d love to try your approach next time.

  10. Love the presentation here and the health benefits of all the spices! I think I need to take another trip to the Indian Food Market by my house and get the ingredients for this one!!! I’m hosting a family get together Thursday, this would be perfect!

  22. Each single step is explained with easy-to-understand photographs. This makes it very easy for us, but must be quite hard work for you. Thank you so much for all the efforts taken and one more brilliant recipe.

  25. This sounds delicious, an unusual take on radishes. I love to find new recipes, especially as nice sounding as this one! 🙂

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