Dal Paratha - Indian bread with Moong Beans

Bored of your regular breakfast routine? Mix some bread with delicious moong beans!

How to make Dal Paratha

Put the split moong beans in a pot together with the water and a pinch of salt and bring it to a boil with the lid on the pot. Let it boil until the water is gone which will take about five minutes. Once it is gone, take the pot off the stove.

Now heat up half a teaspoon of oil in a pan. Roast the moong beans in the pan for about one minute and take them out. Wash the coriander and pick the leaves off the stems.

Take a big bowl and put the flour into it. Add some salt and the fresh coriander leaves. Mix it all once and then add the yoghurt. Mix the dough well and knead it for about ten minutes. Your dough should be so dry that it doesn’t stick on your fingers when you poke into it or knead it. Add one teaspoon oil into the kneaded dough and knead it once more.

The next step can be quite fun! Tear off pieces of dough and roll them into balls the size of table tennis balls. You form them just as you would make a snow ball. Then you press the balls with the palms and thus make them a bit flat.

Let’s get to the rolling of the flat bread. Prepare a small bowl with some flour, a rolling pin and a board to roll on. Put some of the flour onto the board so that the dough won’t stick to it and some flour onto the rolling pin as well. Turn one of the dough balls in the dough and then place it onto the board. Start rolling it out into a thin, flat bread. Of course you can keep them thicker if you like, that depends completely on your taste. It would be best to have a second person now, so that one of you can roll the parathas while the other one fries them. If you do it on your own, you can first roll all the bread and then fry it.

Keep a small bowl of oil and a spoon ready at the side of your stove. Heat up a pan without any fat and when it is hot, place one of the paratha into it. For about a minute you can just let it get baked on high heat. You will see that the top surface is slightly changing its colour, drying and getting white with the heat from the bottom. Softly lift the bread and look at the bottom. If that is showing the first golden spots, turn the paratha around and lower the heat. While the other side is baking, dip the spoon into the bowl with oil and spread a bit of oil on top of the paratha. Turn it around and repeat the same on the other side. You don’t need to fill the whole spoon, just add a little bit of fat to bake it more nicely.

With a spatula you can lightly press on top of the paratha so that it bakes evenly from all areas. Keep on turning it every now and then until it is golden.

Enjoy your paratha with yoghurt, pickles or just some herbal salt – you will love it!