Kwati: The Nine-Bean Soup of Janai Purnima

Kwati — क्वाँटी, from the Newari for "hot soup" — is a celebratory medley of nine different beans and legumes: typically black gram, green gram (moong), chickpeas, field beans, soybeans, black-eyed peas, kidney beans, and more. The beans are soaked and sprouted before cooking, which is the soul of the dish.

That sprouting is both flavour and philosophy: it makes the beans more digestible and nutritious, turning a humble bag of pulses into a genuinely restorative meal.

Kwati is inseparable from Janai Purnima, the full-moon festival in the monsoon month of Shrawan when Hindu men change their sacred thread (janai). On that day, families across Nepal cook a great pot of Kwati, believed to warm and strengthen the body against the damp of the rainy season.

It is tempered with garlic, ginger, jimbu or cumin, and turmeric, and simmered until the sprouted beans are tender and the broth is rich. Eaten with rice, it is a meal that is both festive and deeply nourishing.

Kwati is at root a Newar dish of the Kathmandu Valley — the name itself comes from the Newar (Nepal Bhasa) words for "hot soup." For the Newars the festival day is Gunhu Punhi, the full moon of the month Gunla, and "Gunhu" carries the sense of nine days, tying the celebration to the number nine that gives the soup its nine beans. The same full moon is observed across Hindu Nepal as Janai Purnima (and as Raksha Bandhan), so the dish has spread from its Valley home to become a nationwide festival food.

There is no single bean list set in stone, but a classic Kwati medley draws on black gram, green gram (moong), chickpea, field bean, soybean, field pea, garden pea, cowpea, and rice bean — humble pulses that, sprouted together, become a dish eaten as much for its blessing and seasonal nourishment as for its taste.

A pre-mixed Kwati bean pack saves the work of sourcing nine separate legumes — soak overnight, sprout for a day or two, and simmer. For Nepali families in Canada, cooking Kwati on Janai Purnima keeps a meaningful tradition alive far from home.

A 908g pack makes several generous pots. Order an authentic nine-bean Kwati mix from our Nepali grocery in Canada and celebrate the season the traditional way.