Easy and delicious variety rice recipe made with fresh mint leaves – Pudina Rice with detailed step-wise pictures. Mint Rice or Pudina Sadam is a simple one pot variety rice perfect for quick lunch!

We all love variety rice recipes, don’t we?! I most certainly do. Today’s recipe is one of my favorite Kalanda Sadam (literally translated to mixed rice) – Pudina Rice. As I was wondering what to make for lunch, I remembered a batch of fresh mint leaves that my dad harvested from our small balcony garden. My mind immediately screamed Pudina Sadam/Mint Rice. Now there are many ways to make it and in fact I have already posted Pudina Pulao recipe. This time though, I wanted to make it as variety rice and made it slightly different. And when you have some Sepankizhangu Roast on the side, it elevates the meal plate to a whole another level, isn’t it?

With this Pudina Rice, I decided to keep it real simple. Remember, I had very short amount of time to make it and I didn’t bother cutting any vegetables except for some onions. The mint leaves are ground with green chillies and garlic cloves. This paste is cooked just a little and then mixed with cooked rice. So yes, as long as you have cooked & cooled down rice – it is a breeze making this variety rice. My goto would have been the regular Sona Masoori rice variant but I chose Basmati at the last moment for quicker cooking time. I also added some golden cashews and that just made my Mint Rice super delicious. For someone who doesn’t like strong mint flavor, this is a perfect recipe as it mint is not overpowering. You don’t get the underlying bitterness in the mint paste and it has an abosolutely stunning minty green color too. Check out other variety rice recipes!

How to make Pudina Rice | Mint Rice | Pudina Sadam –

📖 Recipe

Detailed step-wise picture recipe of making Pudina Rice | Mint Rice | Pudina Sadam –

To perfectly cook the basmati rice, bring 1.5 cups of water to a rolling boil and add ¾ cup of basmati rice along with salt as needed. Cook it covered until all water is absorbed and then gently fluff it up. Spread the cooked rice on to a large plate and let it cook down completely. It helps to drizzle a few drops of oil all over it.

Blend mint leaves, garlic cloves and green chillies to a blender.

Blend it to a smooth paste by adding 1-2 tablespoon of water as needed. Set aside.

In a heavy bottomed pan, heat oil. Add mustard seeds and urad dal. After a minute, add cashews.

As they begin to splutter and urad dal, cashews turns golden, add finely chopped onions.

When the onions turn translucent, add the prepared mint paste.

Add salt as needed for the paste (rice is already salted) and cook on low heat until it begins to turn thick.

Now add cooked & cooled down rice.

Gently mix up the rice to coat with the mint paste and leave it on heat for a minute.

Serve hot with any roast or fry. I served it with arbi fry.

Note –

Adjust the number of green chillies depending on your spice preference.
The quantity of mint leaves can be also increased or decreased depending on how flavorful you want the rice to be.
You can use Sona Masoori rice instead of Basmati too.

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