Mung Bean Soup – Filipino Style (Munggo)

Ancient Chinese herbal pharmacist, Li Shi Zhen, writes that mung beans are “highly recommended not only as a rich source of nutrients but also as medication.” The many benefits of mung beans include:

Mung Beans

Mung Beans

  • Detoxifing the body
  • Balancing organs and skin
  • Improve circulation in the 12 meridian channels throughout the body.

Ayurvedic medicine turns to mung bean soup for

  • Gentle detox
  • To relieve digestive issues and chronic allergies
  • To heal the pancreas and reverse diabetes.

Ingredients For Mung Bean Soup:

(Munggo can easily be made vegan by substituting veggie broth for chicken broth and omitting the fish sauce and ground chicharon.)

1 cup mung beans (Lu Dou)

IMG_3135

Malunggay Leaves

2 cups chicken or vegetarian broth (homemade is best)

1 medium onion, diced

1 medium tomato, diced

4 cloves garlic, minced

1 thumb sized piece (or to taste) of fresh ginger (Sheng Jiang), minced

1 tablespoon olive oil

1/4 cup finely crushed chicharon (pork cracklins)

2 cups fresh malunggay leaves (Moringa Leaves), washed and picked off of stems/branch

2 tsp patis (fish sauce) or to taste

black pepper

Cooking Instructions:

IMG_3134Pick through, rinse, and drain mung beans,

Place beans in large saucepan with chicken broth; make sure that there is at least one inch of liquid above the mung beans by adding water.

Bring to a boil and simmer for about one hour until mung beans are very tender, stirring occasionally to avoid mung beans sticking to the bottom of the pot.

When done, set aside. Make sure that your mung beans have enough cooking liquid to be a good soup/stew consistency.

Next, in a large frying pan saute onion in olive oil, until translucent.

 

Add garlic and ginger until very aromatic, taking care that they don’t over-brown or burn.

Add tomato and cook until soft.

Add cooked mung beans and stir to evenly distribute cooked vegetables.

Add water as necessary for a good consistency and bring to a steady simmer.

Stir in malunggay leaves (Moringa Leaves) and chicharon.  (Malunggay is a leafy vegetable commonly used in the Philippines.  You can find it at Asian markets.  If not available, you can substitute spinach.  Chicharon is fried out pork skin.  You can finely crush it by placing it in a plastic bag and crushing with a jar or can, or use a food processor.)

Simmer about 5 minutes until malunggay leaves tender.

Season with pepper and fish sauce.

This recipe is from Karen Villanueva, who ate this regularly as a child. This recipe is courtesy of her mother, Adelina F. Villanueva.  Thank you!

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10 Comments »

  1. I’ve made this soup before following a different (nontraditional) recipe that pretty was tasty, but then I tasted Karen’s soup in class and it was way better! So thank you (and your family) for the recipe! Recipes that are past down through generations are always the best.

    Comment by Heather Cochran — April 11, 2014 @ 11:40 am

  2. Interesting!

    Munggo (Mung Bean Soup – Filipino Style) « Lana Farson Classes…

    Trackback by preventing running injuries — June 5, 2014 @ 9:59 am

  3. I am so excited to see this recipe on here. I tried it for the first time in my first herbs class two years ago and loved it. I may just make a slight variation of this for my herb project next term.

    Comment by Carmen — July 19, 2014 @ 6:57 pm

  4. This looks very delicious! I cant wait to try this recipe!

    Comment by Kelsey Rumfello — August 13, 2014 @ 8:53 am

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  10. This looks wonderful! I have a mung bean curry recipe that I’d like to post here if possible!

    Comment by Cali James — April 12, 2017 @ 6:38 pm

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