Yogic Recipes
Pre-Spring Cleansing Diet by Yogi Bhajan
On March 15, 1991 Yogi Bhajan gave out a diet which can be done in the early Spring for cleansing and strengthening the body. He mentioned it is a diet which is also helpful for increasing the effects of Kundalini Yoga. It is one which he used to do to prepare for various athletic events they used to participate in.
“The diet for achieving this engagement which we are doing is rice and yogurt, where the rice is made with saffron. Take these five things: Almonds (without the skins), raisins, saffron, rice and yogurt (plain, unsweetened). If you go for seven days on a mono-diet of this dish, you can totally revive your entire system. But there’s a condition with it. You can only drink lemon and water, not straight water. And you cannot have this fast or feast, whatever we are calling it, for more than 7 days.
And as we were taught to do, when we were in a dire fatigue and difficulty, and when I used to prepare for the Olympics and our annual athletic meets and all that, we would go on this. We’d go for 7 days on this diet, and then for 7 days on kicheree with yogurt, and then 7 days on this rice, and again on kicheree, and on and on. Like this. We’d prepare ourselves.
It gives you such a stamina. It changes you so much. It gives the body so much flexibility. It gives so much punch to you. You totally become different. And especially, very specially from the 15th of March to the 15th of April, pre-spring. They say within that period the entire body goes through renewing itself. So this is the time to try it.”
This is a recipe which can be used to make this dish:
Saffron Rice
2 cups white Basmati rice (preferably organic)
1 1/2 cups almonds (soaked overnight and skinned)
1 cup raisins
41/2 cups water
10+ threads saffron
Soak the saffron and raisins overnight in water. Saute raw rice in olive oil or ghee (clarified butter) until “toasty” and then add water and other ingredients. Eat with yogurt.
Kicharee
1 cup whole green mung beans
2 cups Basmati rice
16 cups water
1-2 teaspoons salt
1/4 cup olive oil or ghee
2 medium onions, chopped
8 cloves garlic, chopped
4-inch piece of fresh ginger, peeled and chopped fine
1 small cinnamon stick
6 whole cloves
4 green cardamom pods
1-teaspoon cumin seeds
½ teaspoon ground black pepper, or to taste
2 tablespoons turmeric powder
Carefully pick over the beans and wash them. Add them and the salt to the boiling water in a large thick-bottomed pot. Carefully wash the rice and drain. After the mung beans have started to open, add the rice. Cook until the beans are soft and split open and the whole thing has the consistency of a thick soup.
While the beans and rice are cooking, heat the ghee or oil in a thick-bottom frying pan and fry the onion, garlic and ginger until golden brown. Then add the cinnamon, cloves, green cardamom, cumin, and black pepper and fry for 1 minute.
Add this mixture to the cooked rice and beans, stir, and cook for 2-3 minutes on a low heat.
Optional: Add veggies to your taste, allowing sufficient cooking time.
Serve with plain yogurt. Yield: 14 cups.
Properties of Ingredients:
Cardamom – calms and stimulates digestion
Cinnamon – warms and sweetens, a digestive
Cumin – carminative, digestive, balances
Ghee (clarified butter) – for lubrication and assimilation
Turmeric – specific for aiding protein digestion
“Slow eating is one of the best meditations on this Earth. Place your hands, palms down, over the food to bless it. Concentrate and bless your own food. Calmly and quietly make a relationship with your food and your spirit.” Yogi Bhajan
The Trinity Roots: 6 Potent Recipes for Keeping Up!
Recipes for Healing with Onions, Garlic, and Ginger Root
By Sat Jivan Kaur
It is 1971 and Yogi Bhajan said eat onions, garlic, and ginger.He taught us that these three foods would help us stay healthy, detoxify our internal organs, feed our glandular system, regenerate our creative and sexual energy, stimulate our immune system, and help clean and rebuild our brain function and entire nervous system.
Garlic Big Macs
Ingredients:
- Whole grain or sour dough bread sliced and lightly toasted with a thin layer of ghee applied to the toast
- 8-10 cloves of thinly sliced fresh garlic per slice of bread, pile the garlic on in layers
- One slice of cheese (anything you like is great—soy, almond, goat, sheep, or cow’s milk cheese); Jarlsberg is great
Make six to eight slices at a time, place on a cookie sheet and melt the cheese in a pre-heated oven at 425° for approximately 7 minutes (watch carefully so it doesn’t burn). These can be eaten as soon as they cool off a little and when fully cooled they can be stored and taken for lunch or snack the next day or two. Make lots—you can enjoy them reheated or at room temperature.
Ginger Big Macs
Prepare everything the same as above except instead of using garlic, take a large amount of fresh ginger, peel it and grate it finely in a food processor or by hand, discarding any knots of fiber. Lightly sauté the grated ginger in a non-stick frying pan in ghee, almond oil, or sesame oil until it softens and starts to stick. To make it lighter, use less oil and add water in small amounts and let the water cook away, and then add more water. Pile the toast up with ½ cup of cooked ginger, cover with a slice of cheese and cook in the oven as above just until the cheese melts.
You could also skip the cheese and instead cover the ginger on the toast with powdered cinnamon and a drizzle of maple syrup or honey and enjoy ginger/cinnamon toast! If you peel and process a big batch of ginger it can be refrigerated and later used for toast, mixed with rice or cooked vegetables, or it is delicious piled onto a cooked sweet potato with cinnamon and a little Bragg’s Aminos, toasted almond slices, or a touch of maple syrup. If you add the cooked ginger to cooked Basmati Rice, add in a dash of turmeric, salt, and pepper, and serve with yogurt, steamed vegetables, and a side salad for a delicious dinner.
Onion Pizza
Slice 8-10 medium yellow onions very thin and open the slices into individual rings and place them layer over layer on one or two non-stick cookie sheets until they are overlapping and layered thickly. Sprinkle red chili flakes, or diced jalapeno peppers over the top of the onions, add dried or fresh green herbs like basil, oregano, and/or parsley generously over the onions, sprinkle with salt and black pepper (caraway seeds are nice too), lightly cover with your favorite dairy or vegan cheese, and pop in a pre-heated oven at 350° – 400° until the onions cook down and the cheese melts—about 25-30 minutes. Cut into squares and serve with a side of quinoa, basmati rice, and/or baked tofu and a side salad.
Onion, Garlic, and Ginger Soup and Healing Broth
Slowly simmer in a covered soup pot one pound each of onion, garlic, and ginger in 1 ½ gallons of water for at least an hour. Use this broth to make any other soup, your favorite mung beans and rice recipe, or use it to cook plain basmati rice or quinoa, or drink as a healing broth for a day of fasting or a day of eating lightly. The broth can be refrigerated and used a day or two later and can be used with the onions, garlic, and ginger left in or strained out.
Onion, Garlic, and Ginger Juices and Salad Dressings
Add raw ginger or garlic or onion juice or all three to fresh squeezed juices. Ginger is great with fruits. Garlic and onions are great with veggies and all three together can make some fantastic Vegetable 16 formulas: add any mix of veggies you like plus the onion, garlic, and ginger juice. Add jalapeños if you like it spicy. Add onions, garlic, and ginger to fresh homemade salad dressings. Don’t be afraid to experiment and let your creativity flow. Try fresh ginger or ginger juice with mangos, peaches, or nectarines for an unusually tasty salad dressing.
Yogi Bhajan’s Five Oil Salad Dressing
Yogi Bhajan gave a wonderfully powerful dressing that had as much as you wanted to add of raw onions, garlic, ginger, 5 parts fresh lemon juice, one part olive oil, one part sesame oil, one part mustard oil, one part almond oil, one part linseed oil, black pepper, and a little salt. This is a potent and restorative salad dressing and he recommended that you dress the salad with it and let it sit for at least 15-20 minutes before eating the salad.
- ¼ c of each of the 5 oils listed above for a total 1 ¼ cups of oil
- 1 ¼ cup of fresh lemon juice
- 1 bulb of garlic, peeled
- 4 inches of ginger root, peeled and cut into smaller chunks
- 1 onion cut in a large dice
- Salt and pepper to taste
Place all of the ingredients in a blender and blend until well-mixed and even-textured. This dressing is best stored in a glass container and keeps well for about a week.
Ginger Tea
Peel and slice 2 cups of fresh ginger and simmer in a gallon and a half of water with the lid on so the water doesn’t evaporate, for about 45 minutes. Let the mixture sit until it is room temperature and then strain out the ginger. Ginger tea can be served with any kind of milk and honey or maple syrup to taste. This is great for the days before and during a woman’s menstrual cycle, or when you have a sore throat or your digestion is overloaded, or if you feel chilled or have a fever.
Put extra ginger in your Yogi Tea. In New York we have always called our version of ‘heavy on the ginger’ Yogi Tea, ‘New York Yogi Tea.’ My goal when I started making it this way was to get the cleansing heat of the ginger in the throat on the first sip of Yogi Tea. I knew I had gone too far when I got the delicious throat burn and the hiccups!
Ginger Pickup
Weary and still have one more meditation to do? Take three slices of raw ginger and chew them up for a few minutes (swallow the juicy part and discard the fiber) and get an instant stimulating wake up to your taste buds and your nervous system! Your meditation time will fly by. This trick is a good pick up when you are driving or studying for exams too. Try adding an ounce or two of fresh ginger juice to your morning orange juice, you’ll fly through your day and give your immune system a boost as you go through the seasonal change of fall to winter.
The Three Day Garlic Fast
Eat at least three cloves of raw garlic for breakfast, again for lunch, and again for dinner for three days. Drink plenty of water, rest when needed (this is a good diet for a three-day weekend when the weather is warm, you don’t have too much to do, and when your garlicky self won’t be breathing directly on your fellow workers). Exercise lightly and drink plain Yogi Tea without milk or sweeteners. Use a gentle bowel stimulant tea to keep things moving through your body.
Break the fast with fruit for breakfast the fourth morning, steamed green veggies for lunch, and well-cooked mung beans and rice for dinner. Meditate every day and be aware of what your mind thinks about during this fast, and contemplate your eating habits. Try keeping a journal about what you are learning as you begin practicing eating healthier during and after the three days it takes to complete this fast and the days following.
If you can find Breath Assure you might want to take this parsley oil supplement to help counter the garlic smell. Don’t be surprised if your sweat, tongue, armpits, skin, and breath smell of garlic; this is natural and the garlic is actually pushing toxins out through all of your eliminating systems. You will feel cleaned out and detoxified from this powerful fast. I believe this was the earliest diet Yogi Bhajan encouraged his students to do. He said it separated the yogis from the phonies! Don’t give this diet to anyone else until you have done it yourself at least once. If you have eaten poorly most of your life, or been a heavy recreational drug or alcohol user, proceed with caution.
Yogi Bhajan said, “Keep up and you will be kept up!” Try these recipes and learn to feed yourself the foods that will literally give you the super-charged yogic vitality to Keep Up no matter what, and to live the 3HO, Healthy, Happy, Holy life of a Kundalini Yogi!
Special Recipes from Yogi Bhajan
By Guruatma Kaur Khalsa
I’m excited for the opportunity to share these recipes and I’m thinking they have never been published, as Yogi Bhajan gave them out back in the ‘olden days of 3HO’ to individuals challenged by a particular circumstance and when they were in need of a cleansing diet for drug detoxification.
Eggplant Pakoras, Papayas and Cream Cheese
He gave me this recipe in February of 1999 when I was very sick and taking a cocktail of so many prescription drugs that I ended up in critical condition in the hospital.
All the drugs were bouncing off each other and at one point, I was actually hallucinating—a BAD SCENE and terribly frightening! When called for, prescription drugs are valuable tools, but when they’re not under control, they can be very dangerous.
So, we put in a call for help to Yogi Bhajan and this email response, sent by one of his staff, was his offering:
“1. You need to eat Pakoras with A LOT of black pepper and ghee, and with cream cheese.
Pakoras are fried eggplant. You bake the eggplant a little before-hand, then cut it in half and slice into 1/4″ pieces. Sauté them in ghee with lots of pepper. Then dip them in a batter of garbanzo flour, black pepper, cinnamon and chili flakes and fry them up.
2. Eat papayas, also.
3. Problem is with your spleen.”
We spread cream cheese on big lettuce leaves and rolled them into tacos—yum!
My husband and caregivers prepared it for me every day and I remember thinking it was just the greatest food I ever tasted in my whole life; in other words, whatever the formula was, my body needed it real bad.
It turned out to be the perfect formula and eating that diet turned the whole mess upside down and put me back on my feet, cleansing my blood and restoring my immune system—THANK GOD!
Sweet Potato Masala for Drug Damage
Now, here’s another life-altering, cleansing and restorative, 40-day mono-diet he gave to a man in our ashram in 1994 “to flush drugs from the system.” This recipe is really involved—shopping, baking the potatoes, prepping and cooking a huge masala and cleanup took up so much of his time and energy—and that helped him get through the initial stage of abstinence. An all-encompassing, self-healing discipline to focus on was part of the formula for his success—how wise of Yogi Bhajan! The masala is colorFULL, real tasty and totally satisfying:
Bake 8 lbs of sweet potatoes for 1 hour at 350 degrees and peel before they cool.
Brown in 1/2 cup ghee (or more – whatever it takes to keep it from sticking):
7 medium onions sliced
15 ounces of peeled ginger, sliced and pulverized in the food processor
Then add and sauté:
2 TSP salt (optional)
2 TBSP pepper
3 TBSP basil
1 TBSP cayenne
3 TBSP tarragon
3 TBSP fenugreek (ground into a powder)
6 TBSP turmeric
4 ounces garlic (or more) – you can leave the cloves whole
Add 6 cups of water and let the whole thing cook down for up to 3 hours, the longer the better, using a Flame Spreader to prevent sticking and burning.
You can pressure cook it at this point.
Mix it all together and serve with yogurt.
The process of self-healing is the privilege of every being. Self-healing is not a miracle. Self-healing is the genuine process of relationship between the physical and the infinite power of the soul.
© The Teachings of Yogi Bhajan 10-7-74
Yogi Tea (A great coffee substitute and blood purifier)
For 1 gallon of Yogi Tea:
4 Tablespoons green cardamom pods (for colon & digestion)
1 Tablespoon cloves (for the nervous system)
3 Tablespoons black peppercorns (purify the blood)
3 inches ginger root, peeled and sliced (for the nervous system and energy)
Bring 1 gallon of water to a boil and add all of the spices. Cover tightly and let simmer for at least 2 hours. Add black tea for 1-2 minutes then add milk or soy milk. Bring back to a boil and remove from heat. Then add honey.
Golden Milk
This drink is very good for the spine, lubricates the joints, and helps to break up calcium deposits. If drunk before bedtime, it helps fight insomnia.
1Tablespoon turmeric
1 cup water
32 oz milk or soy milk
1 Tablespoon cold pressed almond or sesame oil
honey to taste
Boil the turmeric in water for about 8 minutes until the color darkens and it forms a thick paste. If too much water boils away, add a little more water. Meanwhile, bring milk to a boil. As soon as it boils, add the oil and remove from heat. Combine the two mixtures, and add honey to taste.
