Northeast Indian
Bai (Boiled Vegetable & Bean Stew)
Bai (Boiled Vegetable & Bean Stew) is Northeast Indian home cooking, eaten at lunch and dinner. On the plate it is the dish at the centre and the soup. Below is what usually sits beside it, what it does and does not contain, and what else to cook once you have made it.
Ingredients
- 3 cups spinach
- 1 cup green beans
- 1 potato
- 1 tsp mustard oil
- 1 green chili
- 2.5 cups water
- 1/2 tsp salt
How to cook it
- Cut the potato into small cubes and trim the green beans.
- Bring the water to a boil in a pot and add the potato and beans, simmering until nearly tender, about 10 minutes.
- Add the spinach and slit green chili and cook a few minutes more until the greens wilt down.
- Stir in the mustard oil, just a teaspoon, and the salt right at the end rather than cooking it in.
- Serve hot with rice as a full, simple one-pot meal; this base vegetable version is the everyday foundation of Mizo home cooking.
Serve it with
A Northeast Indian dinner is a plate rather than a single dish. These are the courses that normally sit beside Bai (Boiled Vegetable & Bean Stew), read from the same composition Dinejot builds a real meal from.
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The cooked vegetable
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The protein alongside
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What it is eaten with
A course labelled with another kitchen's name comes from a cuisine in the same family, which is where this plate usually borrows it from.
Safe at your table
Dinejot tracks ten allergens and tags every one of them by hand. Bai (Boiled Vegetable & Bean Stew) carries none of them. That is a checked answer rather than an ingredient list nobody read.
| Allergen | In this dish | Cook this instead |
|---|---|---|
| Peanuts | No | |
| Tree nuts | No | |
| Dairy | No | |
| Gluten | No | |
| Shellfish | No | |
| Eggs | No | |
| Soy | No | |
| Fish | No | |
| Sesame | No | |
| Coconut | No |
These tags are set by a person rather than inferred from an ingredient list, and they describe the recipe as written here. Read the labels on whatever you actually buy.
What it brings to the plate
Bands, not numbers. Dinejot does not weigh anybody's food, so it says light, moderate or hearty and stops there. This dish was read and set by hand.
- Calorie band
- Light
- Protein
- Low
- Food groups it covers
- Vegetables
- How this was set
- Hand audited
When to cook it
Bai (Boiled Vegetable & Bean Stew) takes about 30 minutes from a cold stove to the table, and the cooking itself is a fair bit of work. It is eaten at lunch and dinner. Nothing in the calendar rules it out, so it is a year round dish.
Watch someone make it
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More to cook
Cooked from the same things
Other dishes built on spinach, green beans, and potato.
From the same kitchens
More cooking from Northeast India.
Does the same job on the plate
Swap any of these in when you want a meal the same shape.
Cook this with your whole family
Dinejot plans breakfast, lunch and dinner as whole plates, built around the cooking you call home and filtered for the allergies at your table.
Meal suggestions support your goals. They are not medical advice. Please ask your doctor about your family's health needs.