What’s your favorite pumpkin recipe? For me it’s this pumpkin arachuvitta sambar recipe! And I’m not just saying this because I am sharing the recipe with you today. It is one of my favorite pumpkin recipes and also my favorite vegetable to make sambar with.
Sambar is a staple dish in Southern part of India. It is a mildy spiced, tangy stew made with lentils, vegetables and tamarind water. It is spicy, aromatic and goes so well with rice, idlis, dosas, millets etc.
The key to a good sambar is the balance of all the flavors. Too much tamarind will make it too sour, too much chilly and spices without the tanginess is not good too. But one important thing that most people forget while making a sambar is to add a little bit of sweetness which will make all the flavors pop. So it is customary to add a little bit of jaggery at the end to bring out a little sweetness in the dish. Now, pumpkins with their natural sweetness, does the job of jaggery and goes beautifully well with all the flavors. Sambar and pumpkin is a match made in heaven if you ask me 🙂
The recipe is actually quite simple. Traditionally all you would need to do is make a basic tadka with mustard seeds, curry leaves, asafoetida and turmeric. Add the pumpkin, spice powder and tamarind water and cook them until the pumpkin is soft and the raw smell of tamarind is gone. Then add in some cooked mashed lentils and boil until the flavors blend together and the whole house smells divine. You would finish it off with some chopped cilantro (skip it you aren’t a fan) and serve it a dollop of ghee with steaming hot rice / idlis or carbs of your choice. Easy isn’t it? Now I will share the recipe for the instant pot version today which is even easier 🙂
I use 2 sambar powders in this recipe. One is my mom’s homemade sambar powder and the other is freshly ground for some added fragrance and aroma. Now you could just use a store bought sambar powder and skip the fresh masala It’s up to you! The extra effort is worth it, because it the freshly ground masala powder makes it even more aromatic. To make the fresh spice mix you’d need – coriander seeds, asafoetida, fenugreek, channa dal and curry leaves
Absolutely! Veggies that will go very well in this sambar are drumstick, ashgourd (white pumpkin), small pearl onions, zucchini, carrots, capsicum, sweet potato and eggplants. You could just use one or a combination of veggies.
This is traditionally made with pigeon peas or toor dal. But if you don’t have access to toor dal, you could also use moong dal (split yellow mung lentils)
Now that we have an idea of what goes into this dish, lets dive into the recipe 🙂
Pumpkin and tanarind based lentil stew usually served with rice or idli/dosas
Soak your dal for a mininum of 1 hour. (You can also use already cooked dal instead)
Switch on your saute mode and when it heats up, add the oil.
When the oil heats up, add the mustard seeds, asafoetida, curry leaves, roasted fenugreek powder, turmeric, green chilly, chana dal and let the mustard seeds splutter
Add the pumpkin cubes, little salt . sambar powder (store bought or any sambar powder of your choice) and saute for a minute.
Add the tamarind paste, 4 cups water ( or 4 cups tamarind juice extracted from 1 small lemon sized tamarind )
Add the soaked lentils, salt as needed and pressure cook in manual for 10 minutes and let the pressure release naturally
Meanwhile while the sambar is cooking, dry roast the ingredients mentioned under spice masala powder and powder it in a spice grinder or food processor.
When the pressure settles, open the instant pot lid, add the freshly ground sambar masala powder and let it boil for 2 minutes in saute mode. As the sambar boils, mash few pumpkin pieces using a ladle, add water as need to get the consistency you desire.
Serve hot with rice / idlis with a dollop of ghee and some chopped cilantro.
Cook the dal with a little salt and a pinch of turmeric powder in a pressure cooker or open pan until soft and mushy. I usually cook for 15 minutes in the instant pot or 5 whistles in the pressure cooker. Set it aside.
Heat up a thick bottom saucepan / kadai and add oil.
When the oil heats up add the mustard seeds, chana dal, curry leaves, asafoetida, green chilly, roasted fenugreek powder and let the mustard seeds sputter.
Add the chopped pumpkin cubes, little salt, sambar powder, 1/4 cup water and saute for 2 to 3 minutes.
Add 3 cups of tamarind juice extracted from a small lemon size tamarind or add 1 tbsp tamarind paste diluted in 3 cups water and let it simmer in medium heat until the raw smell of tamarind is gone.
As the tamarind is cooking, dry roast the ingredients given under spice powder and powder it to a some what smooth masala powder.
When the tamarind is cooked, add the cooked dal, freshly ground spice powder and simmer for another 4 to 5 minutes. Add water as needed to adjust consistency, Mash few pieces of pumpkin so that the sambar gets a mildy sweet taste.
Serve this arachuvitta sambar recipe hot with a dollop of ghee and a topping of chopped cilantro leaves.
This is one of my favorite Fall curries and I would love for you all to try this. If you give it a try, click a picture and share them on social media using #cookingwithpree.
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Thanks Guys, Your Recipe Was Too Fantastic. Me and My Family Loved it. I Will definitely Share your Rrecipe with my friends.
I am so glad you guys enjoyed the recipe Hema :)
Oh! My intention was not to disparage the wonderful efforts that you ( and others) are taking to popularise the traditional South Indian cuisine all over the world.
The sambar is now made in so many ways that we will be soon running out of names for each variation.
Indian recipes go beyond being merely a step by step guide to making a dish. They are embedded with nuggets of cultural information on how seriously our ancestors took the business of eating. And how they came up with dishes that went beyond the palate, to nourish the body and touch the soul.
Recipes therefore become the vehicles that carry this information to the new generations.
I am no expert cook. My expertise begins ( and ends ) at the dining table.
It is perhaps the memories of my childhood chores in the kitchen, that triggered my observation.
In fact, i tried out the sambar powder in your recipe and made a one-pot sambar-rice in the pressure cooker. It was smashing! The aroma was out of the world! Thank you.
My apologies again if i sounded critical or offensive. Wholly unintended.
And that is the 'Arachu vitta' truth!😆
Haha Thank you! I really appreciate the feedback :) It is really wonderful to see people who are passionate about south Indian food as I am :)
1. The recipe is good but the term ' arachuvitta' seems inappropriate.
It can just be called ' Sambar'.
2. ' Araichu Vitta ' connotes the method of using a wet-paste of spices, and the complete absence of powders.
( Araichu = ground; Vitta = poured )
The use of coconut , is also an integral part of the preparation and NOT an option. This wet-paste method imparts a completely different flavour and texture to the sambar, and those who have tried it once, and have access to coconut ( the actual one and NOT its tinned, dessicated versions ) will prefer it over the versions that use the powder.
3. In fact this was the actual original way followed by our grandmothers in the times before the advent of the blending/powdering machines. I speak from my childhood experience of manually grinding this 'SPICE PASTE' everyday for my mother on a stone mortar and pestle . It was no doubt a more labourious / time-consuming process, but Indian Cooking always went beyond being a gastronomic chore. It was always a labour of LOVE!
4. The way our grandmothers went about it, is as follows. The spices used in the recipe ( chiefly coriander, red chilli, Fenugreek, gram dhall/ urad) are roasted in vegetable oil on moderate heat, till they attain a golden hue and exude a pleasant aroma. This is the KEY PART of the whole recipe, and decides the final flavour of the Sambar. Over-roasting can be disastrous. After the spice-mix cools down, it is ground (in a blender these days ) along with the freshly shredded coconut. After the first few runs to homogenize the hard spices with the soft coconut, the grinding continues with table spoons of water added at intervals, till a beautiful orange-red paste is obtained. Here again a slightly coarse paste is preferred to a very smooth, runny, saucy fluid.
This is the WET MASALA PASTE which gives the prefix ' Araichu Vitta' to the Sambar.
5. I have often wondered how this difference in processing of the same spice-set, can change the flavour / texture so much. I think the first is the liberal use of fresh coconut (first ground to release its water, and then boiled to release its oils.)
Secondly it is roasting of the spices in oil. The oil has a way of taking up the heat and uniformly coating the spices, and transferring the heat, thereby making a uniform roast. More importantly, oil has a way of ABSORBING the flavours of the roasting spices and releasing it later on, into the sambar.
In dry roasting, these wonderful flavour of the spices, whose originally intended destination is our nostrils, are in danger of wafting off into the atmosphere!
6. Finally, sambar has numerous avatars across South India. The AV version is thicker and more fibrous ( courtesy the coconut ). It is generally part of the regular full-course meal where it goes well with the rice.
The powder versions generally go well with the tiffins like Idli or Dosa where, a thinner consistency is more suitable. The powder versions also lend themselves to experimentation with the spice mix- like say the addition of garlic or fennel or pepper etc. In all its variations, the sambar is the King of the South Indian Cuisine, scoring on all nutritional parameters as well.
Thank you so much on your insights on sambar.. Yes arachuvittu contains cococnut and it is perfect with rice..But since we are grinding the fresh spices to flavor the sambar I used the term arachuvittu. I also wanted to give the readers an option to make sambar without coconut :) I have grown up eating arachuvitta sambar with coconut in my house.. My mother, my grandmom, everyone makes it and we love it. But my mom also makes this version once in a while and we call it arachuvitta sambar too. Guess different families have different terms that we like to use. In fact my hubby's family calls just podi pota kuzhambu as sambar, whereas we call it paruppu kuzhambu. That said, thank you so much on your thoughts on this post sir.. I see that you are passionate about the topic and I really appreciate it. I hope you understand that my intention was not to dupe anyone..
Sambar is the favourite food of any South Indian, plus its the most versatile dish you can make and it goes along with anything be it Rice, Bread or Dosa. The recipe is really nice and detailed. Thanks!
So glad you liked it! We love sambar in our house :) and yes, it is so good with rice/ dosas
Have you ever used butternut squash for this rather than pumpkin? or any other commonly found squashes in the US?
Oh yes, you can use butternut squash, chayote squash, acorn. I like to use whatever i find in my refrigerator.