Millet khichdi

Millet khichdi (Kitchari with millet grain), a simple and comforting meal that is delicious with the addition of various veggies. This is a one-pot dump-and-go style recipe that is suitable for any meal of the day.

There are many types of khichdi in India, and they differ in taste and preparation from state to state. In Gujarathi style khichdi, tempering is added at the end to the dish and hence called as vaghareli khichdi.

As millets are a little bland in taste, I made this recipe flavourful by adapting the Gujarathi style and I have added tadka or tempering of mustard seeds, cumin seeds, red chili, and hing.

Let's begin making millet khichdi with step by step pics:

• Take a pressure cooker or an Instant pot inner pot and add soaked and washed lobia and millet.

• Now to this millet, add chopped veggies of your choice, I used potato, carrot, and beans here, you could use any veggies according to the season and availability.
• And add turmeric powder, red chili powder, coriander powder, salt, cloves, and cardamom. I also used chopped Indian gooseberry (amla) as they are in season. You can skip them or instead use one tomato for slight tanginess.

• Add water and pressure cook for 2-3 whistles for approximately 15 minutes. If using an Instant pot, select pressure cook mode and cook for 8 minutes on high pressure. Make sure to close the VENT.

• Let the pressure release naturally or do force release after 10 minutes.

• Now make tadka with all mentioned tadka ingredients. I sometimes skip hing and add grated garlic instead.

• Add the tadka to the cooked millet mixture, mix it well, and adjust the salt. Finally, add the coriander leaves and the Gujarathi style vaghareli millet khichdi is ready to serve!

Recipe Notes and variations:

• Though a traditional khichdi is made with rice and lentils, this recipe uses foxtail millet and black-eyed peas. You could use any kind of small millets like little millet, proso millet, barnyard millet, browntop millet to make this vaghareli khichdi.
• You could use any kind of lentils like green lentils, red lentils, pigeon peas to make this recipe.
• Make sure to soak Lobia for at least 8 hours to match with the cooking time of millet. Else your lobia will be undercooked or millet will be overcooked.
• Depending on the season, you could use various veggies like carrot, beets, potato, sweet potato, radish, beans, green peas, and broccoli stalks.
• As Indian gooseberry is in season, I have used it to make this khichdi little sour. You could skip it totally or use raw mangoes or tomatoes or add little curd at the end for the light tanginess in the dish.
• As this is so easy to make and a one-pot dish, we make this very often at home. Sometimes, to change the taste of the millet khichdi I do add homemade sambar powder or curry leaves powder or garam masala powder or goda masala powder. This is optional but adding it will make the khichdi taste so different.
• I sometimes add a handful of peanuts while pressure cooking millet lentil mixture. Cooked peanuts will taste good.

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