My favorite ingredients rice and bitter gourds come together in this one pot meal. Recently some of my drafts have been pushed back because I am just too excited to share the new dishes I make and my drafts get buried down. This is another one that was made in early February and I am finally posting it. I have shown two methods here, one that uses uncooked rice and the other one uses cooked rice.
My plan was to make only one type, but since I found it a tad bitter I decided to try the other way too. I love bitter gourd and liked both methods. I also used a mandolin to slice the bitter gourd into thin slices. The inspiration for this rice is from my bitter gourd fry post. In India my mom used to buy baby bitter gourds and fry them and they were my absolute favorite. Here, I only get the big ones and that too once in a few months. Enjoy the rice and off to the recipe.
Ingredients
1 tbsp oil
Few cloves and a small piece of cinnamon
1 cup chopped onion
3 garlic cloves
1 tsp ginger paste
3 green chillies
1 cup chopped tomato
1/4 cup channa dal (Kadala paruppu – soaked for 1 hour)
3 cups thinly sliced bitter gourd (Pavakkai)
1.5 cups basmati rice
Water
Chilly powder
Turmeric powder
Salt
Method
Heat oil and add cloves and cinnamon.
Add onions, ginger and garlic.
Saute until onions are done.
Add tomatoes and chilly.
Wait till the tomatoes turn mushy.
Add the sliced bitter gourd and soaked channa dal.
Add salt, turmeric and chilly powder.
Mix well.
Add the soaked basmati rice.
Add 3 cups water. Mix well. Close lid and cook until rice is done. I use a pressure pan without the weight valve and the rice is done in 15 minutes.
Rice is cooked. This method produces a slightly bitter rice.
I tried out this alternate method on a smaller scale and it is similar to the above method. The difference is that we use cooked rice here. Since the rice is not actually cooking in bitter gourd water, this method was less bitter.
Follow the same steps as above until the step where you have to add uncooked rice. Instead of adding uncooked rice, allow the bitter gourd and channa dal to cook.
Now add the cooked rice. I had leftover sona masoori rice and I have used that. Mix gently..
Rice using the second method is ready.
The rice looks a bit clumpy because it is leftover sona masoori rice. Use cooked and cooled basmati rice instead.
We had the rice with carrot raita.
Enjoy!
Legume event happening here and started by Vidhya

Krithis’s Serve it - Pressure Cooked

I haven’t heard of bitter gourd rice. Seems delicious!!! Good presentation.