Beans Usili Recipe, Paruppu Usili Recipe, Usili – Kannamma Cooks (2024)

Recipe for Beans Usili. Paruppu Usili with Beans. Traditional Tamil kitchen style recipe. With step by step pictures.

Usili is a very traditional dish made in Tamilnadu and is very popular among the brahmin community. My friend Priya is married to a Tamil Brahmin and she learnt this recipe after marriage. Its a Tam-Brahm recipe as we call it. When I first heard it from her, I dint know what she was talking about. I have never heard of the word usili till then. But its such a common dish in her family and I learnt it later from her. Its such a delicious recipe that goes so well with rice for lunch along with sambar or rasam. The lentils are cooked and roasted till they are nutty and veggies are added along with a tempering. Beans is a very traditional veggie used in usili. There are so many variations that are available and this is Priya’s recipe. The original recipe does not use onions. But I like it in the recipe and so I have added onions too. Here is how to do tamil style Beans Paruppu Usili.

Soak the chana dal in water for one hour. Drain the water after soaking. Grind the chana dal with salt, asafoetida and dried red chillies. Do not add any water while grinding. Pulse it several times.

Oil an idli plate and place the ground mixture on the plate. Fill about half an inch of water in a pressure cooker and place the idli plate on the cooker. Pressure cook the mixture for 2 whistles. Switch off the flame. Let the pressure from the cooker release naturally. Let the mixture cool. Once the mixture is cool, crumble the mixture onto a plate. Set aside.

Wash and clean the beans. Now we need to de-string the beans. This is an important step as the strings are very fibrous and not pleasant to eat. Snap off the tip of one end of the bean with a paring knife and pull the string like below. Snap and pull other end of the bean too. Discard the snapped-off ends and strings. Note that the tender young bean might not have strings. So just snap off the ends alone. Finely chop the beans and steam the beans in a pressure cooker for two to three whistles until tender. Set aside.

Many people have asked me about the small pressure cooker that I use for my recipes. Its a 3 litre prestige stainless steel pressure cooker thats so perfect for my small family and I use it for everything. Boiling rice, lentils, veggies, steaming idlis etc.. Its such a multi tasker and does not consume lots of space. Here is where you can buy it online.
Prestige Deluxe Alpha Stainless Steel Pressure Cooker, 3 Litres

Now, back to the recipe.
Heat oil in a pan and add in the mustard seeds, dried red chillies and curry leaves. Let the mustard seeds splutter. Add in the finely chopped onions and fry till the onions are soft. Add in the crumbled lentils and fry for a good 6-7 minutes.

Roasting the lentils until light brown is very important for this recipe. Roasting the lentils gives a very nice flavor to the dish. Once the lentils are nicely roasted, add in the cooked beans, salt and turmeric. Fry for 5 minutes.

Switch off the flame and serve the beans paruppu usili.
Paruppu usili is usually served for lunch with Rasam and Sambar.

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