i don’t know how many of you like mooli/radish….. but i just love mooli sabzi with chapatis. this recipe of mooli ki bhurji is again a special punjabi dish that is made at home for breakfast. excellent with phulkas or parathas & a bowl of curd. a healthy and comforting breakfast. you can make the bhurji for lunch or dinner too 
. another breakfast recipe made from mooli in punjabi cuisine is mooli ka paratha.
in my home it is a standard practice to have stuffed parathas, aloo poori or sabzi with rotis for breakfast. it is only me in the whole house who is a bread & cereal person and has breads or poha or the weekly idli, dosa for breakfast.
this mooli ki bhurji is mil’s recipe again. when i first had this punjabi mooli bhurji (for lunch and not breakfast), i was like wow… i have always had mooli with coconut… the typical goan way of making radish.
this was an extreme to me. the pungency of the mooli/radish, the hotness of the chilies, the mustard oil & ajwain flavors… so many tastes coming together in one dish.
so if you don’t like mooli, then you must try this mooli bhurji… you will forget your animosity with mooli/radish
i had moolis which had less roots and more greens. whichever way… the punjabi mooli ki bhurji is anways delicious.
remember to use both the root as well as the greens for the mooli bhurji. the greens should be tender. if not, then just make the bhurji with the mooli/radish root. either chop the mooli finely or grate it.
there is already a similar mooli sabzi with punjabi wadis posted on my blog. if you like mooli and have wadis at home, you check the recipe here.
punjabi mooli ki bhurji recipe details are below:
ingredients
- 5-6 white radish with leaves
- 1 tsp ajwain/carom seeds
- 2-3 green chilies
- 1/4 tsp asafoetida/hing
- 2 tbsp mustard oil
- salt as required
method:
- rinse and peel the radish.
- either grate or chop the radish roots finely.
- rinse the leaves and then chop then finely too.
- heat the mustard oil till it starts smoking.
- add the ajwain and fry for half a minute.
- now add the green chiles and asafoetida and fry again for half a minute.
- add the radish along with the leaves.
- stir.
- add salt and mix well.
- do not cover the pan.
- let the radish cook on a medium flame.
- keep on stirring in between.
- the radish and the greens will start to release their juices.
- just stir the bhurji.
- the liquids will evaporate whilst the radish is getting cooked.
- when the radish gets completely cooked and the whole bhurji looks dry, remove from fire.
- serve hot with soft phulkas.
my notes
add less chilies to make the bhurji less hot & spicy.
{ 15 comments… read them below or add one }
Dassana,
It is easy to make your own chipotles, it just takes patience. They are jalapeno peppers (mild to medium hot chiles about the size of a thumb), and they are smoked. When we buy them here, they are most often green, but they turn red when ripe. You can smoke them either way, whole or cut into small circles (faster). Here we can also buy them dried out and pre-smoked, but you actually get richer flavor when you smoke them yourself. If you have an outside grill, you just keep the heat on quite low, with some wood chips, for a long time, between 3 hours to an entire day. There are a lot of opinions about how to do this, so I am giving you a few links, but you can decide yourself how you might prefer them. The smoking brings out the sweetness of the pepper, and diminishes the spiciness a bit, making the flavor more mellow. It is a very popular flavor here, people stir it into their sauces and salad dressings. The smoking technique works with other kinds of peppers, too, but be careful not to do this inside your house, you might create a smoke that will really irritate your throat or eyes!
Once you have the peppers smoked, we create an adobo sauce, which is really just a kind of chipotle chutney made with garlic, vinegar, and sweeteners. Often this is used just as is, or maybe blended smooth, to create something like a spicy ketchup used as a condiment. You can stir this into mayonnaise to spread on your sandwich, or in salad dressing. You can stir some into your mashed potatoes or cauliflower puree, etc. This version, with the peppers whole, cooked into a thick sauce, can be bought in a small can here, and a thinner, sweeter version can be bought in a bottle like ketchup. I am sending you links so that you could try making this yourself. When I was in India, I bought jalapeno peppers, but I don’t remember what they called them there, if you like, I will ask my Indian friends. But this smoking technique is one that you could use on almost any kind of peppers or mix of peppers, some sweet, some hot.
http://www.resplore.com/projects/chipotle.html
http://www.motherearthnews.com/organic-gardening/how-to-smoke-chipotle-peppers.aspx#axzz2Sq4zAdQX
http://www.thatsmyhome.com/texmex/sides/chipotle-peppers-in-adobo-sauce.htm
http://www.ehow.com/how_5531350_make-hot-sauce-chipotle-pepper.html
I bought jalapenos in India, and made Mexican-style salsa for them, they seemed to like it a lot (or at least they were too polite to tell me otherwise!); they ate it with tortilla chips (crispy fried corn chappattis cut in triangles). I also made them guacamole, but we had a hard time finding avocados there, they called them butter fruit, muhkta- something like that, we went all over Chandigarh looking for them but only found a few and they were not very good ones. I also made them pina coladas, pineapple coconut rum drinks (some wanted “virgin” ones, without the rum), and they liked those a lot. It surprised me that they didn’t already know that combination, since coconut seemed to be used a lot in other cooking.
This has been fun, talking to you! I will try other things soon! Linda
thanks thanks thanks linda for the lengthy explanation and the links. we do jalapeno peppers sized chilies here. i will try with them. i have saved your entire comment on my laptop and will refer to them when i make the sauce. really appreciate you taking time and writing so much in detail. also pina colads and the coconut drinks are well known. atleast i know of them. i have even had them minus the rum. avocado is difficult to find in the northern parts of india. but they are easily available in mumbai, goa and bangalore.
Hi! I visited India for the first time in December, and I am trying to make some of the wonderfull things I ate there. I did not have this dish, but it sounds good. What I saw in India was a white radish they called Mooli, about 1.5″ in diameter and about 12″ long. The only radish I can find here (in Seattle) is either the Daikon, which is also white, much thicker, but doesn’t have any greens, or else the small ball-shaped red radishes, with little tails, which can be bought with their greens. Can I use those red radishes and greens to make this dish? Could you please post a picture of what they greens look like before they are cooked? Thanks!
hi linda. the white radish is called as mooli here and pretty long. they are tender and not that pungent or strong. you can make this dish without the greens. sometimes i don’t get the greens and i just make it with the white roots.
here is a similar recipe only with the radish but without the greens. you don’t need to add the dried lentil dumplings in this recipe. http://www.vegrecipesofindia.com/mooli-sabzi-with-wadis-punjabi-wadi-mooli-sabzi-recipe/
you can use daikon. you can even use the red radishes. you need tender radishes. in the sarson ka saag post there is a pic of the radish greens – http://www.vegrecipesofindia.com/sarson-ka-saag/
Hi, Dassana! Thanks for the info! I looked at the picture of the radish greens you sent, and they look much like the red radish leaves, so I think I will try to make it with those. I never thought about cooking radish before, usually we just eat it as salad or garnish ingredients, but this looks interesting, and in India I also had it in chappattis made with chickpea flour. I also make a salad myself with daikon radish and red radish, jicama, chopped tomato, scallions, cilantro (coriander), and diced jalapeno peppers, and black and white sesame seeds. I season it with rice vinegar, a little sugar, Thai fish sauce, diced chipotles in adobo (those are smoked jalapeno peppers that come canned in a red vinegar sauce), and worcestershire sauce. I cut it in large chunks for a salad, or small dice to use as a condiment, and it is best when it has a chance to sit, refrigerated, for an hour or more so the flavors can mix, but you might want to pour off some of the extra liquid before serving. Thanks again for your info, I will try your recipe soon!
hi linda. in india too, we make salads with radishes. but we also cook with it. what you had was besan paratha with grated radish. if you are interested in cooking with radish, i am sharing two links with you. one is spiced radish stuffed whole wheat flat bread. and the other is radish sambar. for the flat bread, grate the radish. then squeeze the juice from the radish. use this juice to make the dough along with water. and the radish is used for stuffing.
mooli paratha – http://www.vegrecipesofindia.com/mooli-paratha-a-punjabi-radish-paratha-recipe/
radish sambar – http://www.vegrecipesofindia.com/radish-sambar-mullangi-sambar/
thanks for the detailed recipe on salad. i would love to try chipotles. but i don’t get them here. i shall try this recipe minus some of the ingredients soon.
really a good and easy to make recipe.
I love the mooli leaves subji, but hardly get these greens here..nom..nom..
We make a dish called Muji haakh in Kashmir. Same process, but no carom seeds. I am craving some of that now.
I generally make the guy remove the leaves!! I should not do that the next time. Will try this. Looks delicious
A very healthy recipe dear.
Very yummy with awesome click
As a child, I had an aversion to radish because of its pungent smell. My Mom loves it and cooks it with coconut. However, there is a variety of radish that we find here that do not have any strong smell at all. I have eaten them raw in salads. They are roundish and very small in size.
i have seen some of these radish pics in food blogs. we don’t get it here. all we get is the indian white radish…
Healthy curry…perfect to go with rotis and rice. Nice clicks!