Bitter gourd curry is an excellent dish that combines all flavors.
Know your Bitter Gourd
Bitter gourd or bitter melon is an Asian vegetable. Unfortunately, its bitter taste turns off many people. You can’t cook anything bitterer than this vegetable. This plant contains a phytochemical that can lower blood sugar levels – a plus that cannot be overlooked. In other words, it’s diabetic friendly.
According to Ayurveda (a very popular form of medicine in India), every taste is perceived in two ways. One that you feel on your tongue, and the other that comes from the reaction of the food with the acidic medium of your stomach. The bitterness of bitter gourd that you feel on your tongue becomes sweet when it reaches your stomach. This helps detoxify and purify the tissues. I won’t go into detail here about the different flavors and their benefits. We need a balance of all six tastes (sweet, sour, salty, pungent, bitter and astringent) in our daily diet for optimal health. If any of them are missing, you’ll not be satisfied with your meal. Indian cuisine follows this principle to a great extent.
Me and Bitter Gourd
As a kid, I wasn’t too keen on this vegetable and always found all sorts of excuses not to eat it. However, a curry that my mother prepared changed my whole attitude towards it. Anyway, that’s not the recipe (I’ll be sure to post it another time). Now, I love this vegetable so much that it’s rather comforting. My favorite combination is rice, spicy bitter gourd and yogurt/quark.
Bitter Gourd curry recipe
The curry recipe I’m sharing with you today was created in my kitchen, based on an idea from my husband. It’s such a simple and delicious curry that you’ll be licking your fingers. Moreover, it has the ability to turn any bitter gourd hater into a lover. If you want to prove me wrong, give it a try.
It’s a very quick recipe. Cook bitter gourd with lentils, mango, chili powder, turmeric and salt in a pressure cooker. Once the pressure is released, open the cooker and mash everything with the back of a spoon. Then add the coconut milk and adjust the salt. Finally, heat it until it bubbles and switch of the stove. Finish it off by a sesoning of thinly sliced shallots, dried red chilies, curry leaves and mustard seeds in some oil. The tasty bitter gourd curry is ready.
Also try my other curry recipe.
My Bittergourd Curry (Pavakka/kayapakka curry)
Ingredients
- Red lentils/ toor dal-1/2 cup
- Bitter Gourd chopped- 2 cups
- Raw Mango chopped-1 Cup
- Chili powder-2 teaspoon
- Turmeric powder- 1/4 teaspoon
- Salt
- Thick Coconut milk-1 cup
- Oil-1 tablespoon
- Shallots- 2-3 finely chopped
- Mustard seeds-1 teaspoon
- Dried red chili-2 broken
- Curry leaves- a few or a handful
Instructions
- Pressure cook toor dal along with bitter gourd, mango,chili powder, turmeric and salt.
- Once the pressure is released, open the cooker and mash it with the back of a ladle/spoon.
- Add coconut milk and heat it through but do not boil.
- In a pan, heat oil.
- Add in the shallots, mustard seeds, broken chilies and curry leaves.
- Stir fry until shallots turn slightly brown and crisp.
- Pour this into the cooked curry.
- Enjoy with a plate of rice along with a protein of your choice.
- Do not forget to comment about how you liked it.
Notes
Adjust the mangoes according to its tanginess. If not too tangy, then increase it. The trick here is not to overwhelm the bitter gourd but to balance it.
The chili powder can be increased or decreased as per your taste and the heat of the chilies.
Final curry should have a balance of bitter, tangy, heat/spicy and salty.
I have tried it both with Indian and Chinese bitter gourd. Both turns out really good. Here I have used the Chinese variety.
If you are using canned coconut milk, 1/2 of it will be enough if creamy or an entire can if light.
Instead of coconut milk you can add about half cup shredded coconut ground into a paste.
As I said, take care not to over shadow the star ingredient.
Hey Urmila. Thats a smart combo bitter gourd n green mangos. Will def try. Keep writing..
thanks viji