First time I tasted this soup in Karaikudi Chettinad Restaurant. I went with my friends and when we see this drumstick soup in menu card, we were tempted to order this. But in Karaikudi restaurant most of the dishes are so spice and especially drumstick soup is so hot and spice that we couldn't able to enjoy the taste of the soup. After that experience I stayed away from drumstick soup. Yesterday, I tried the drumstick soup in home and I added only considerable spice and hence the soup was so delicious.

There are many variations to this soup. I have used little lentils along with drumstick. But we can do clear and then drumstick soup or we can also add cream / milk to make the soup thick and we can exclude lentils. One of my friend adds thick coconut milk to the drumstick soup without lentils and the flavour was very nice. But I have included lentils which gives the drumstick soup very nice flavour and thickness so that we can exclude cream/milk/cornflour.

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Recipe card to prepare Drumstick Soup

Method with step by step pictures to make Murungakkai Soup

Wash and Chop the drumstick into little finger sized pieces. Add drumstick pieces in a vessel with 4 cups of water and pressure cook the drumstick. Also pressure cook the thurdal separately. When the drumstick is cooked, do not strain the water as the water would have got the essence and nutrients of drumstick. So we are going to use the drumstick cooked water for the soup.

Heat a pan and add oil/butter. Add the seasoned ingredients and saute them for a minute. Then add finely chopped onions and garlic along with a pinch of salt and saute them till the onions are transparent but should not be so brown

Add chopped tomato and peppercorns to the onions and saute them till the tomatoes becomes mushy. When the tomatoes are cooked, add the mashed dal and mix well

Strain the drumstick water and keep it aside. Take each cooked drumstick and using a spoon remove the pulp from it and keep it aside.

Add the drumstick water to the pan and allow the soup mixture to boil in low flame. Add half of the drumstick pulp keeping the rest aside. Allow the drumstick soup to boil for 10 minutes in low flame. Add necessary salt. Let the essence of the drumstick pulp gets incorporated with the base masala. Then remove the soup from flame and allow it cool off and then blend it to a smooth and clear soup.

Now clean the pan and again keep it in flame. Add the blended smooth soup and the remaining drumstick pulp to the pan and stir well. Keep in low flame for another 10 minutes and finally garnish with coarse pepper and finely chopped spring onion leaves and remove from flame