Mint Millet Pongal (Pudina pongal)

Mint Millet Pongal is an easy and healthy recipe with pudina leaves as the main ingredient. Make your regular South Indian breakfast recipe more nutritious with mint and millet grain.

Though Pongal is a traditional breakfast recipe, I make it for lunch and dinner also, usually when we run out of veggies or time. This millet Pongal is a simple and very flavourful recipe, make it once, and I am sure you will make it regularly.

You can make this Mint Pongal with any type of small millets like Foxtail millet, little millet, proso millet, Kodo millet.

Hot Pongal with a dollop of ghee is my comfort food any day! And whenever I cook millet and lentil mixture, I usually make one sweet Pongal and one khara Pongal (savory version). You might be interested in another simple Ven Pongal recipe on this blog.

Let's start making mint Pongal recipe:

Cooking millet dal mixture in an Instant pot

• Add washed millet, washed moong dal to the Instant Pot inner pot

• Now add water to it and close the lid.

• Seal the vent of Instant Pot and select manual mode. Cook for 8 minutes on high pressure.
• It will take around 10 to 12 minutes for pressure to build up. Once the Instant pot stops, wait for 10 minutes and do a manual pressure release.

Cooking millet lentil mixture in a pressure cooker or electric rice cooker

• Add washed millet, washed mung dal to the pressure cooker or electric rice cooker inner pot.
• Now add water and pressure cook for 2 to 3 whistles. Once pressure is released naturally, mix the cooked millet dal.
• If using an electric rice cooker, cook until it is done.

Making Mint Pongal:

• While the millet lentil mixture is cooking, take the mint leaves, coriander leaves, curry leaves, ginger, green chili, grated coconut, curd into a mixer jar. 

• If you want to make this recipe vegan, you can use any vegan curd. In this recipe, I have used coconut yogurt, and hence I omitted the coconut and regular curd while making the mint mixture.
• Grind the mixture into a smooth paste and keep it aside.
• Heat a pan and add oil or ghee to it. Once the oil is hot, add cumin seeds, cashews, a pinch of hing, and let them fry for a couple of minutes.

• Now add the mint mixture, salt and let it come to a boil.

• Add millet lentil mixture to the pan and stir it well. You can add water to adjust the consistency.

• Let the mint millet mixture cook for around 5 minutes and switch off the flame. 
• Add coconut yogurt and mix it well. You can skip this step if you are using regular curd as we are adding it while griding mint paste.

Recipe Notes and variations

• I usually soak my millet for more nutrient bioavailability. And If you are soaking millet, you can cook for 6 minutes on high pressure in an Instant Pot. 
• You can make this Pudina Pongal with plain white rice or hand pounded rice. 
• The same cooking time works for rice also. But these cooking times do not apply to brown rice. As I haven’t tried brown rice, I cannot mention the timings for it.
• You can make this Mint Pongal recipe with quinoa or a mix of quinoa and millet also. The same timings work for cooking quinoa and lentil mixture.
• Though mint is the hero of this recipe, you can skip it and add an equal amount of coriander leaves. You could even add coriander stalks to this.
• If you want to make this recipe entirely in an Instant pot, once the pressure is released, add the mint mixture, salt to it and switch on the saute mode. Add water to adjust the consistency and let it cook for around 5 minutes. You could make tadka in another small pan and add it or even skip it. In case you omit the tadka, top it with roasted cashews, and you will not regret 🙂

Pudina Pongal recipe card:

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You might be interested in these millet recipe: