Kosambari is a typical and traditional salad in Karnataka. It is prepared during major festivals, auspicious occasions, and marriages and even offered as ‘prasada’ in temples. This is also called as Koshimbir in Konkani and Maharashtra Cooking and is very easy to prepare.
Kosambari tends to become runny if kept for a long time, mainly because of salt and cucumber. To overcome this there are 2 tips that I have learnt from my mother.
- Adding salt to the finished salad at the last minute, just before serving.
- Allow the moong daal to get soaked in the water left out by the diced cucumber. There is no need to soak the moong daal separately for a long time.
Ingredients
- 1/4 cup moong daal
- 1 big cucumber peeled
- 2-3 green chillies
- Salt to taste
- Juice of 1 lemon
- ¼ cup shredded coconut
- Chopped coriander leaves for garnish
Seasoning:
- 1 tsp mustard seeds
- Asafetida
- 2-3 red chillies broken
- Curry leaves
- 2 tsp oil
Method:
- Wash the moong daal in enough water and drain it out completely.
- Chop the peeled cucumber into fine pieces and place it over the moong daal. Do not mix them together. Make sure that the moong daal gets the water left from the cucumber.
- Add the shredded coconut, cut green chillies, lemon juice, coriander leaves and cover it. Again don’t mix anything for now.
- Now prepare the seasoning (tadka) of oil, mustard seeds, curry leaves, red chillies, and asafetida and pour this over the lentil, cucumber mixture.
- Keep this aside for at least an hour or two.
- Finally just before serving add salt and mix this thoroughly.
RC, the salad looks appetizing but a little doubtful about raw moong dal.
Hi. I’m a little confused by comment #1 calling this soup, and #2, calling it salad. It looks delicious, nontheless, but I’m wondering how much oil, as it isn’t listed in the ingredients. Thanks.
Hi Valerie, thanks for looking into this. This is actually an Indian salad and requires 2 tsps of oil during seasoning. I have updated my ingredients a bit.
Koshimbir…Made extensively in maharashtrian household. Yours looks gud. I like the one made with cabbage and cocnut too.
It looks so delicious.
I love your site very much , but either I dont have one of the Ingredients or I dont know it
for this recipe I dont know what are moong daal and Asafetida ? please help
Thank you very much Mona. Moong daal is small split lentil and it is available in Indian groceries. You can see a picture here :http://www.route79.com/food/daal.htm
Also Asafetida called “hing” is also available in Indian groceries.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asafoetida
The flavor and taste is strong and pungent and needs acquiring the taste of it.
Thanks a lot for makeing it clear . Keep on red chilles
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