Traditional Turkish mung bean salad: Surprise yourself and your friends

If you’re going to try just one traditional Turkish recipe, make it this one! Turkish mung bean salad is a vibrant celebration of harmony, excitement, variety, and joy.

I first discovered this dish in the already legendary The Turkish Cookbook by Musa Dağdeviren, who you may recognize from Netflix’s Chef’s Table.

The combination of tender mung beans, crunchy walnuts, briny olives, and sweet-tart pomegranate seeds creates a symphony of flavors that’s both nourishing and satisfying.

It’s so delicious that I served it at our Christmas dinner last year and Turkish women—known for their incredible cooking skills—were asking me for the recipe!

What’s special about Turkish Mung Bean Salad?

What sets Turkish mung bean salad, or maş piyazı, apart is how it transforms simple, wholesome ingredients into something extraordinary!

The special touch comes from the balance of textures and tastes: tender mung beans provide a mild, earthy base.

These are then paired with crunchy walnuts for texture, briny olives for depth, and sweet-tart pomegranate seeds for a burst of freshness. Each bite offers a satisfying contrast, making it more than just a salad—it’s a vibrant celebration of flavor.

What makes this dish truly stand out is the brief sautéing of the olives with garlic. This simple technique intensifies the olives’ briny, robust flavor and gives them a warm, savory richness that permeates the entire dish.

Sautéing helps soften the olives slightly, releasing their natural oils and blending their deep, salty notes with the mellow sweetness of the garlic.

This dish works both as a side dish and main dish.

Other Turkish Vegan Meals:
Vegan Kumpir – Turkish Baked Potato
Turkish Red Lentil Soup with Miso
Vegan Lahmacun – Turkish Pizza

Origins and cultural significance of Turkish Mung Bean Salad

Originating from Gaziantep, a city in Southeast Anatolia known for its rich culinary heritage, this dish captures an often underrepresented element of Turkish cuisine—fresh, bold flavors combined with nourishing plant-based ingredients.

These are the kind of traditional dishes that won’t make you miss animal-based products at all. Virtually every cuisine has an abundance of them.

It’s just due to the massive industrial upscaling in the last century that made meat so cheap and accessible for everyone.

In addition to that, the marketing capacity of corporations with unprecedented reach and resources has significantly influenced dietary trends and consumer choice.

I love leafing through traditional cookbooks but it hurts that the heritage food that is most in tune with our health and the environment – namely whole foods plant-based meals – is barely represented in many cookbooks.

I’d say that most Turkish people don’t even know that their cuisine has traditional meals like mung bean salad.

Interesting facts about mung beans

Mung beans have been cultivated in Asia for thousands of years and are a staple in many cuisines, particularly in India, China, and Southeast Asia.

They are often associated with health and longevity. Incorporating mung beans into a mung bean salad is a simple way to enjoy their many benefits.

High nutrition density: Mung beans are packed with essential nutrients, including protein, fiber, vitamins, and minerals. They are an excellent source of plant-based protein, making them a popular choice in vegetarian and vegan diets. More below.

Rich in antioxidants: Mung beans contain various antioxidants, including flavonoids and phenolic acids, which help combat oxidative stress in the body and may reduce the risk of chronic diseases.

Digestive benefits: High in dietary fiber, mung beans can aid digestion and promote gut health. They can help prevent constipation and improve overall digestive function.

Eco-friendly crop: Mung beans are known for their ability to fix nitrogen in the soil, making them a sustainable choice for crop rotation. They require less water than many other crops, contributing to more sustainable farming practices.

Lastly, their small size, green and earthy flavor and soft texture make them a unique culinary component in the kitchen, especially in whole food plant-based cuisine.

Mung beans can also be sprouted – which improves their nutritional value. You can use those sprouts to give a healthy raw twist to mung bean salad.

Okay, last tip: they’re also great as a porridge – preferably use a pressure cooker.

How to cook mung beans perfectly for a salad

For a mung bean salad, you want to cook the beans until they’re tender and not more. They shouldn’t be mushy, though it’s natural for a few beans to burst during cooking.

Do consider the cooking time provided on the package as cooking times can vary significantly between mung beans. You can decrease cooking times by soaking them overnight or for a few hours.

For most mung beans, cooking times are 25-30 minutes.

Streamline cooking mung beans

Cooking mung beans can sometimes feel time-consuming, especially if you’re trying to prepare large quantities at once. That’s where my SmartBatch Method comes in, making it easier to streamline your kitchen time without sacrificing variety.

What’s Different About the SmartBatch Method?

Conventional batch cooking often involves cooking five full meals in one day on the weekend, which takes hours of preparation. It takes a lot of time out of your weekend.

Alternatively, some batch cooking methods rely on cooking large quantities of one food item, but this limits variety—and with limited freezer space, you can’t store endless options. There is a better solution.

My SmartBatch Method works differently. Instead of cooking entire meals, this approach is component-based.

Think of it like building blocks—by preparing key components like mung beans in bulk, you can mix and match them with other ingredients to create different meals throughout the week.

This modular approach lets you enjoy variety while still keeping things quick and convenient.

For example, once you’ve cooked a batch of mung beans, you can use them to prepare mung bean salads, soups, or stir-fries, allowing flexibility with minimal effort.

Nutritional benefits of mung beans

Mung beans have a high nutrition density! The reputation of being a health food is totally justified. They’re loaded with plant-based protein, making them a go-to ingredient for anyone looking to add more protein to their diet, especially if you’re following a vegetarian or vegan lifestyle.

In just one cup of cooked mung beans, you’ll get about 14 grams of protein—perfect for keeping you energized and helping with muscle recovery.

But that’s not all—mung beans are also an excellent source of fiber. This fiber does wonders for your digestion, keeping things moving smoothly and helping to maintain a healthy gut.

Mung beans contain both soluble and insoluble fiber, meaning they not only keep you regular but also support heart health by helping to lower cholesterol levels.

Another thing worth noting is how nutrient-dense these little beans are. They’re rich in important vitamins and minerals like folate, iron, magnesium, and potassium.

Folate is essential for healthy cell growth and is especially important for pregnant women, while magnesium and potassium support everything from muscle function to heart health.

And if you’re looking to improve your blood pressure, potassium helps balance out sodium levels, which can have a positive effect on heart health.

When paired with vitamin C-rich ingredients like pomegranate seeds or lemon juice, as in Turkish mung bean salad, the absorption of iron improves significantly.

This means your body gets more out of the plant-based iron in the beans, making the combination especially beneficial for those following vegetarian or vegan diets.

Lastly, mung beans are packed with antioxidants, including flavonoids and phenolic acids. These antioxidants protect your body from free radicals, which can cause oxidative stress and lead to chronic diseases over time. Including mung beans in your diet is a simple way to give your body the extra defense it needs!

Mung bean salad variations

Mung bean salad is an incredibly flexible dish, with many possibilities for variations. One of the best combinations is mung beans with fresh or dried herbs like mint, parsley, or cilantro.

The fresh, grassy flavor of mung beans pairs well with the cooling, fragrant notes of mint, while citrus elements like lemon or lime juice can brighten the entire dish, adding a refreshing tang.

A key variation involves experimenting with different olives. While green olives bring a briny, fresh flavor, black olives add a richer, umami taste.

Sautéing the olives briefly with garlic can take the flavor to a new level, deepening the savory richness.

Mixing black and green olives together provides a balance of flavors that complements the earthy base of the mung bean salad.

Another winning pairing for mung bean salad is pomegranate seeds and walnuts, a common combination in Turkish salads.

The sweet-tart burst from pomegranate seeds alongside the crunch of walnuts brings both texture and a touch of brightness to the salad. Use this in other salads as well whenever you want to make it more exciting!

What you can learn from Turkish mung bean salad

Turkish mung bean salad demonstrates several important principles of cooking that you can apply beyond this specific dish. Here are some key takeaways:

Walnuts and pomegranate seeds are a killer combo

The combination of pomegranate seeds and walnuts is a great example of how you can create balance in a dish through contrasting textures. The crunchy walnuts paired with the sweet-tart burst of pomegranate make each bite more dynamic.

This balance of texture adds complexity to mung bean salad, but it’s a principle that can be applied to other dishes too—pairing crisp with juicy, or crunchy with soft, can elevate the eating experience.

Sautéing olives with garlic: an unusual but effective upgrade for a dressing

Olives in this dish show that a single ingredient can provide depth when used thoughtfully.

Sautéing olives with garlic enhances their umami flavor and turns them from a simple ingredient into a central flavor component.

The lesson here is that a seemingly small ingredient, like olives, can make a big difference when given attention.

This concept can be applied to other dishes—consider giving more focus to individual ingredients that may seem secondary but can really boost flavor when treated properly.

Disrupting the heaviness of beans with garlic

Beans can feel heavy or earthy on their own. The pairing of garlic, especially raw or lightly sautéed garlic, adds a punch that cuts through this heaviness, bringing the dish into balance.

This is a useful principle not just for mung bean salad, but for any dish where beans or legumes play a central role. Garlic helps to add brightness and reduce the dense feeling of legumes.

Using Herbs to Bring Freshness

Mung beans have an earthy, grassy flavor, and herbs like mint or parsley bring in a fresh, fragrant element that contrasts this.

When preparing earthy ingredients like beans, adding herbs or citrus can lift the dish and make it feel more vibrant. It’s a lesson in how simple herbs can completely change the tone of a dish.

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