How many teaspoons of sugar in dal khichdi?

Khichdi is a one-pot dish of rice and lentils simmered together, usually with turmeric, salt and ghee, and often cumin, ginger or vegetables. Dal khichdi uses split lentils, commonly moong or toor dal. It is eaten across India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nepal, and has a long tradition as a plain, soft meal for young children and for anyone who is unwell.

It is the only mixed dish on Dr Unwin’s South Asian foods chart. The chart’s other rows are single foods: rice, two roti, lentils, chickpeas, millet, poppadom, raita, bitter gourd and mango juice.

The chart gives a 200g bowl a glycaemic index of 60. The GI of a mixed dish depends on its recipe, in particular the proportion of rice to lentils, the kind of rice, how soft it is cooked and how much fat goes in. The chart does not give its recipe, and a khichdi with more lentils and less rice would be expected to test differently from one made the other way round.

No glycaemic load is printed, so the load here was back-calculated from the teaspoon figure.

The 200g portion is the heaviest weighed portion on the chart and describes a cooked, wet dish. Khichdi ranges from thick and fairly dry to loose and soupy, and a thinner khichdi holds more water in the same bowl.

Both main ingredients also appear on the chart on their own: boiled rice, at 150g, and red lentils, weighed dry.