Resilience Recipe: Magic Mung Soup
With life being pretty full on right now, I want my immunity and mental and emotional health to stay in tip-top shape so I have more quality presence to give.
Whenever I’m feeling a little sluggish, I do a few days of mung soup. It’s a warm, oily, and fulfilling way to clear the accumulated sludge!
I find the warm, slightly spicy soup to be great for my nervous system and because it's great for my digestion, it improves my overall vitality, which is great for my vocal health too! Sort of like panchakarma in a bowl, except it only costs about $2 per day.
Here’s how I like to make my mung soup. Today it's green, because I have long beans, zucchini, rainbow chard and cilantro... but sometimes it's other colors depending on what other vegetables I use.
- The whole thing takes about 30 minutes from start to cleanup in a pressure cooker, if I clean up while everything is cooking.
- I only have to make it once in the morning, and I nibble on it whenever I'm hungry throughout the day.
- It's "gheegan" not vegan and gluten free IF you check your asafoetida powder source. Substitute coconut oil for ghee if you must.
Step by Step Preparation Ritual
First, soak the beans while preparing the onions, ginger + other veggies you're adding! Here's a visual of all of the ingredients (minus the ghee and your veggies).
I don't measure strictly, but pictured is enough for 1 person to eat well for 1 day.
It's about
- 3/4 cup whole green mung
- a small onion
- a tablespoon of fresh ginger
- 1tsp each of fennel seeds, cumin seeds, salt, and turmeric powder
- 1/2 tsp of asafoetida.
You'll want at least 4-5 cups of water to cook everything in + whatever veggies you're adding.
- Get cooking! Melt a spoonful of ghee and fry the cumin & asafoetida powder. (Be sure you get gluten free if you're GF like me - most are mixed with wheat flour.)
- Add the other spices, onions, and ginger and stir until onions are soft. (Use ginger powder if you don't have fresh.)
- Add in salt + the soaked, cleaned mung beans + other hard veggies you're adding, and water. Stir with a bit of mantra, as you like!
- Cook until the beans are soft and falling apart. (In my pressure cooker, that's 3 whistles.)
- Turn off the heat. Stir in any leafy greens you're using and wait a few minutes for them to cook.
- Add more salt to taste.
- Finish with a dollop of ghee and freshly cracked black pepper.
Serve it up, eat it slowly to savor it fully, and let me know how you like it!
If you've got a big week coming up, or are about to start a new project (such as a deep-dive teacher training with us, perhaps!? ;) and want to be clean, clear, shining, and resonant, this soup and the full cleanse protocol might be just the thing for you.
I do a solid week before every teacher training I lead.
In India, I'm often the only person in the group who doesn't catch a cold during the springtime Himalaya weather changes. Dipika says that's because my channels have been cleaned of sludge, and there's nowhere for the viruses to get cozy, stay a while, and multiply to the point where I suffer symptoms. I hope our Ayurvedic kitchen wisdom does you well, because...
NOTE:
Even if you aren't strict about eating ONLY this soup, or don't get the Ayurvedic herbs recommended in Dipika Delmenico-Voss’s amazing 7-day cleanse protocol, it's great. I did order the herbs from Ayushakti US website recently, and they came to Hawaii within 4-5 days.