What type of dal is used in ghugni?

Ghugni is most commonly made with whole dried yellow field peas—called matar or dabli in Bengali. This is sometimes sold as white vatana in stores. But ghugni can be made with other peas or legumes too.

Ghugni can be made with whole green peas—both dried or fresh. Ghugni is often made from kabuli chhola (garbanzo) and even chhola (Bengal gram).

Is ghugni motor and motor dal the same?

Motor/matar is dried whole yellow pea. Yellow field peas are harvested when they are fully mature and dry. This whole pea is used to make ghugni.

When the seed coat or husk is removed, and the two cotyledons are split, then it is called motor dal, or split pea.

In short, the whole dried pea is motor. The split, dehusked pea is motor dal.

Are green and yellow peas the same?

Green and yellow field peas come from the same plant species, but the colour of the pea is a genetic trait that varies from plant to plant.

Pea plants are selectively bred to produce plants that only yield yellow or green peas.

Are ghugni matar and chickpea the same?

No, they are different. Ghugni matar is dried yellow pea. Chickpea can refer to either Kabuli chhola (garbanzo) or Bengal gram. You can make this ghugni with kabuli chhola (garbanzo) too, in fact, our mutton ghugni recipe uses garbanzo.

Ghugni vs chotpoti

Chotpoti is a streetfood that is very popular in Bangladesh. It is quite different from ghugni. Chotpoti is a chaat made by mixing boiled dabli (another name for matar) with raw onions, green chillies, roasted cumin, tamarind pulp, etc. to produce a lip smacking snack. It is often garnished with chopped boiled eggs.

Ghugni is a cooked snack that started as home food.

Ghugni is also often turned into a chaat in streetfood shops—topped with sliced onions, green chillies, cucumber, lime juice, tamarind, etc—but, that version is a little different from the ghugni made at home.

Ghugni that is sold in streetfood stalls is typically less spicy because it is garnished so heavily before serving.

Is ghugni a Bengali dish?

We don’t know where ghugni originated but ghugni is certainly not unique to Bengal. Ghugni is very popular in Odisha, Bihar, Jharkhand, the North Eastern states—basically all of Eastern India (and in Bangladesh).

You have to remember that modern administrative-political divisions in South Asia are less than hundred years old. Food and culture do not follow state boundaries.

What do you eat with ghugni?

There are many ways to have ghugni.

A runny ghugni is had as a side with luchi for breakfast. It is also an all day snack in streetside stalls served with a thick cut quarter pound loaf of bread charred over coal fire.

Ghugni is served to guests when they come over for tea in the afternoon. It is a fixture in any Bijoya Dashami gathering.

Ghugni can also be a chaat. In this form, a lighter version of ghugni, is garnished heavily with diced onions, sliced green chillies, cucumbers, and topped with bhaja moshla and lime juice or tamarind pulp, sold in the evenings in roadside stalls. Sometimes, you can get boiled eggs on top to make it a heavier meal.

Ghugni is also used to make other chaats like samosa chaat, where a whole samosa is crushed, then topped with ghugni and other garnishes.

Is ghugni a snack or a side dish?

Ghugni can be both a side and a snack. See answer above for a few of the ways to eat ghugni.

Why do you boil the dal with onions?

Since the dal is being cooked to 90% doneness by boiling in the first stage, adding some flavour elements (such as the onion, one could also add bay leaves, green chillies) in the boiling water makes the dal a little more fragrant all the way through.

Why are you not boiling the dal in a pressure cooker?

Ghugni matar vary widely in how long they take to cook. Some batches can take forever to boil, while some will be mush before you know it. In fact, we have had batches of matar where half the peas turn to mush while the rest stay hard.

With that in mind, we felt that cooking in an open pot, while being more time consuming, is more forgiving. It allows you to monitor the progress, and intervene quickly where required by either turning off the heat, or by cooking them longer.

That said, if you are confident, use a pressure cooker or instant pot. The goal is for the peas to be cooked while retaining their shape and bite.

Can I make ghugni without soaking the matar?

Unsoaked matar does take much, much longer to cook.

If you forgot to soak your peas overnight, you can soak them in hot water for 2 hours to hydrate them faster.

Not soaking peas has some advantages though. Unsoaked peas actually retain their shape better than soaked peas, especially if you are pressure cooking them.  Consult your pressure cooker manual for exact time estimates.

Can I pressure cook ghugni matar?

Yes, you can. Here is how to do it. Add the matar along with water, salt, and any other aromatics you want to add, in a pressure cooker. Close the lid, place the pressure cooker on the stove and turn on the heat to high.

Once it reaches full pressure—you will hear a stable hiss—turn down the heat to the lowest and set a timer. Consult your pressure cooker manual for the exact time. On Hawkins Futura models, this is 12 minutes.

The goal is to maintain full pressure without letting the whistle go off (or for the whistle to go off as few times as possible).

After 12 minutes (or however minutes your pressure cooker manual says), turn off the heat and let the pressure release naturally. This can take 10 minutes.

Open the pressure cooker and check if the peas are nicely cooked, but unbroken. If the matar is too soft, make a note for the next time. If it is undercooked, note that too.

After one or two trials you will know the perfect time for your pressure cooker and stove.

Can I make ghugni without onion and garlic?

Yes, you can. Add some hing or asafoetida along with the whole spices when you are tempering the oil in the beginning. You may need to increase the quantity of ginger and other spices a little to compensate.

Is mutton ghugni made the same way?

We have a ghugni recipe with mutton that you can follow. We prefer using kabuli chhola (garbanzo) for that recipe, but if you prefer to use matar (yellow peas) just substitite the kabuli chhola with matar in that recipe.

Can I make ghugni with fresh green peas?

Ghugni is also made with fresh peas when sweet green peas are in season in winter. You can follow the same recipe, but you won’t need to boil the peas separately since they are quite tender.

You should also reduce the quantity of spices a little so that the flavour of the fresh peas is not masked by too many other aromatics.

What is bhaja moshla?

Bhaja moshla in Bengali translates to toasted spices. It is a deeply roasted blend of spices that is used to garnish many Bengali dishes.

You can buy the Bong Eats Bhaja Moshla directly from Amar Khamar. Their team makes the spice mix in small batches fresh every week, meticulously following our recipe.

Alternatively, you can follow our recipe to make it at home yourslef.

Can I skip the coconut?

You can make this recipe without the coconut. It will still be quite tasty.

The coconut adds a contrasting texture. Frying it in oil also produces a beautiful flavour. It is very subtle, but the fried coconut does elevate the dish.

Can I skip the ghee?

The ghee mellows the flavour of the ghugni a little and takes off the edge, we feel. Which is why we add it early in the cooking process. You don’t smell the ghee.

If you are making this as a chaat you can totally skip it.

Can I skip the sugar?

The short answer is yes. Here is the longer answer.

For an umami flavour, saltiness in food is often balanced with something sweet. This is true in almost all cuisines all over the world. In most other South Asian cooking this sweetness comes from slow cooked onion and garlic.

Broadly speaking, in niramish Bengali recipes—meaning vegetarian recipes which do not use onion and garlic—sugar is added to compensate for the absence of any other sweet element.

This recipe of ghugni won’t taste sweet if you follow our recipe because it uses (nearly) the same weight of sugar as salt in the recipe for the perfect balance. With this ratio, you won’t necessarily register the dish as sweet. It will just taste balanced.

How is that possible? This is because salt is saltier than sugar is sweet. If you taste one gram of salt it is going to taste very strongly salty. One gram of sugar in comparison won’t taste as strongly sweet.