South Indian · Side dish
Kootu
Kootu is a thick South Indian side in which a vegetable and a mild lentil are cooked together and bound with a ground paste of coconut, cumin and green or red chilli. It sits between a dal and a dry sabzi in consistency. The whole dish turns on cooking the lentil and the vegetable to the right points, which are rarely the same point.
- Prep
- 15 min
- Cook
- 25 min
- Total time
- 40 min
- Servings
- 4
- Vegetarian
- Vegan
- High-protein
- Gluten-free
Ingredients
- 1/2 cup moong dal or chana dal, about 100 g
- 3 cups chopped vegetable: bottle gourd, ash gourd, pumpkin, snake gourd or cabbage
- 1/2 teaspoon turmeric
- 1/2 cup grated fresh coconut
- 1 teaspoon cumin seeds
- 2 green chillies, or 2 dried red chillies
- 1 teaspoon raw rice, for body
- For the tempering: 1 tablespoon coconut oil, 1/2 teaspoon mustard seeds, 1 teaspoon urad dal, 1 sprig curry leaves
- Salt to taste
NNWA health note
Kootu is one of the better constructed dishes in Indian home cooking from a nutrition point of view: a pulse and a vegetable in the same bowl, so the meal carries protein, fibre and micronutrients without anything being fried. Moong dal is the easiest of the lentils to digest, which is why kootu appears in convalescent and everyday cooking alike. The coconut adds saturated fat, though a quarter cup shared across four servings is a modest amount. If you eat it with rice, the dal and rice together give a more complete amino acid profile than either alone.
Method
- 01
Rinse the moong dal and pressure cook it with the turmeric and two cups of water for three whistles, or simmer it covered for 25 minutes until it collapses.
- 02
While it cooks, boil the chopped vegetable separately in just enough salted water to cover, until a knife goes through without resistance but the pieces still hold their shape.
- 03
Grind the coconut, cumin, chillies and raw rice with a splash of water to a smooth paste. The rice is what keeps the kootu from splitting.
- 04
Mash the cooked dal lightly and combine it with the vegetable and its cooking water.
- 05
Stir in the ground paste and salt, bring to a slow simmer and cook for 5 minutes only. Boiling the coconut hard makes it grainy and smells stale.
- 06
Heat the coconut oil, splutter the mustard seeds, brown the urad dal, add the curry leaves and pour it in.
- 07
Rest the kootu off the heat for 10 minutes before serving, since it thickens as it stands.
Last reviewed on 10 September 2026.
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Why cook the lentil and the vegetable separately?
Because they finish at different times and a kootu with dal still holding its shape is as wrong as one with vegetable dissolved into mush. Moong dal wants to fall apart completely; ash gourd or snake gourd needs only a few minutes and turns to water if it gets the same treatment. Cooking them in one pot means sacrificing one to the other. Two small vessels, brought together at the end, costs five extra minutes and is the difference between a kootu and a thin sludge.
What is the raw rice in the coconut paste doing?
It is a binder. Starch released from a teaspoon of rice thickens the liquid and holds the coconut in suspension, so the dish stays creamy instead of separating into solids and a watery layer at the edge of the plate. A tablespoon of soaked poha or a spoon of cooked rice does the same job. Leave it out and the kootu is still edible, but it will look broken within ten minutes of being ladled out.
Why should the coconut paste barely simmer?
Fresh coconut turns grainy and develops a flat, slightly sour smell when it is boiled hard, and once that has happened it cannot be undone. Five minutes at a bare tremble is enough to cook out the raw taste of the cumin and chilli and to let the starch thicken. This is the same reasoning behind adding coconut milk at the very end of a Kerala curry, and it is the single most common way a home kootu goes wrong.
How is kootu different from sambar or a poriyal?
Sambar is tamarind sour, thin enough to mix into rice, and built on toor dal with sambar powder. Kootu has no tamarind at all, is thick enough to eat with a spoon, and is seasoned with a fresh coconut and cumin paste rather than a roasted spice blend. A poriyal is dry and has no lentil in it. On a full meal all three can appear together without repeating themselves, which is the point of the arrangement. Compare the method with our sambar and with avial, which uses a similar paste but no dal.
Which vegetables suit it and which do not?
The gourds are the classic choice: bottle gourd, ash gourd, snake gourd, ridge gourd and pumpkin, all mild and high in water. Cabbage, chow chow and beans work well. Spinach and other greens make a softer version that needs less cooking water. What does not work is anything strongly flavoured or waxy, since potato turns the dish stodgy and brinjal fights the coconut. Chana dal suits the firmer vegetables and moong the softer ones.
Can it be made ahead?
It reheats better than most coconut dishes, provided you warm it gently and add a little hot water, because it stiffens considerably in the fridge. Two days is the sensible limit. If you are batch cooking, the dal can be cooked and refrigerated separately for up to three days and the vegetable and paste done fresh in fifteen minutes. Which dal you choose changes the protein it delivers, and our guide to the protein in different dals sets out the comparison, while the plant based nutrition course covers how to plan a week of meals around pulses.
Learn the science
Plant-Based Nutrition
This dish's nutrition reasoning is taught in full in this NNWA course.
What people ask about Kootu
What is the difference between kootu and sambar?
Sambar is soured with tamarind, thin enough to mix into rice, and flavoured with a roasted sambar powder. Kootu uses no tamarind, is thick enough to eat with a spoon, and is bound with a freshly ground paste of coconut, cumin and chilli. They are meant to appear on the same plate without overlapping.
Which dal is best for kootu?
Moong dal for soft, watery vegetables like ash gourd and pumpkin, since it collapses quickly and is the lightest to digest. Chana dal suits firmer vegetables such as beans and cabbage, holding a little more texture and taking longer to cook. Toor dal is possible but its strong flavour crowds the coconut.
Why did my kootu turn watery?
Either the vegetable released more liquid than the dal could absorb, or the coconut paste was ground without the teaspoon of raw rice that binds it. Boil off the excess before adding the paste, and let the finished kootu rest for ten minutes off the heat, since it thickens noticeably as it cools.
Can kootu be made without coconut?
You can substitute two tablespoons of roasted gram or a few soaked cashews ground with the cumin and chilli, which keeps the creaminess and the binding. The dish will taste less sweet and less distinctly South Indian. Leaving the paste out altogether gives you a plain lentil and vegetable stew rather than a kootu.
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