Across centuries and continents, this little legume keeps finding new ways to feed us.
Mung beans are both everywhere and nowhere. Ubiquitous across Asia, they hide in plain sight: steamed in thick custards on Thai dessert trays, served sprouted alongside bowls of pho, simmered into creamy, curried Indian dal, and even spun into slick, translucent threads of glass noodles.
The mighty legume, also referred to as green gram, moong bean, or munggo, takes many forms. It shape-shifts through savory and sweet dishes alike around the world, lending a mild, slightly earthy flavor. Yet mung beans remain largely unfamiliar in the West. That’s changing, though, as the mung bean finds itself in an unexpected new role—not only because of what it brings to the table but because of what has been missing from it: eggs.
According to the United States Department of Agriculture, nearly 170 million egg-laying chickens have been culled in the past 14 months to contain the spread of H5N1, the avian flu. The outbreak, which first raised concerns in early 2024, has triggered widespread egg shortages across the country and sent prices soaring, prompting consumers and restaurants alike to seek alternatives. Just Egg, the leading plant-based egg substitute designed to imitate the texture and appearance of traditional eggs in scrambling, baking, and frying, has been around since 2019. But since the spread of H5N1, it emerged as an unsuspected solution, reporting a fivefold increase in sales over the past year. Its key ingredient: mung beans.
The mung bean’s rise to prominence in the United States offers an opportunity to appreciate not just what it can replace but what it has always offered. Centuries before they were emulsified into plant-based eggs, mung beans were front and center in the royal kitchens of Siam, a region now recognized as Thailand. In the 1500s, when Portuguese traders and missionaries brought recipes for custards, marzipans, and cakes, the royal Thai court set out to recreate them. Faced with the absence of ingredients like almonds, cream, or wheat flour, cooks turned to what they had: bananas, coconut milk, cassava, taro, and mung beans. The results make up a large portion of Thai desserts today, such as mo kaeng, a creamy mung bean custard influenced by Portuguese egg custards.
But reducing mung beans to a substitution isn’t the point. “They’ve been incorporated for their own merits—texture, taste, versatility—rather than as stand-ins,” says Thai chef and cookbook author Leela Punyaratabandhu. She points to Chinese-Thai desserts like tau suan, a sweet mung bean porridge, and khanom pia, a flaky pastry with a sweet mung bean paste, where the bean takes center stage.
Still, for the uninitiated, mung beans face a cultural learning curve. Their nutty, earthy flavor and at times grainy, dense texture can confound Western palates, especially those unfamiliar with Asian cuisine, where soybeans and red beans are commonly used in desserts. Take luk chup, for example. At first glance, they look like European confections: tiny, glossy fruit sculptures that resemble marzipan. But inside is a soft, subtly sweet mung bean filling, flavored with pandan and coconut milk. “People go nuts over its visual appeal,” Punyaratabandhu says, but sometimes “find the texture off-putting.”
Protein-rich, versatile, and cheap, mung beans have long been a nutritional backbone in India. Chef Vijay Kumar of Semma in New York City grew up eating mung beans in southern India—sprouted, steamed, and shared at celebrations. “There’s a festival called mulaipari in my hometown where sprouted mung plants are carried in a temple procession to thank the gods for the harvest,” says Kumar. That memory shows up on his menu in the form of Mulaikattiya Thaniyam, a sprouted mung bean dish with coconut, chiles, and pomegranate that proudly features sprouted leaves on top, “to replicate those festivals,” he says. When Pete Wells reviewed Semma for the New York Times in 2022, he singled it out as one of the best dishes of the night. That moment energized Vijay and is the reason why he believes there’s a growing global appetite for mung beans: “I’m pretty confident that, like a lot of other grains that have caught virality, mung beans are going to take over the world.”
Echoing that sentiment, Hetal Vasavada, baker and cookbook author, jokes that mung beans “are just one cauliflower-level of virality away.” In an era where oats, chickpeas, and quinoa have each had their moment, Vasavada feels that mung beans are next in line.
“Mung beans are like medicine in my world,” says Vasavada. In Gujarati kitchens, she explained their use in khichdi, stews, and sweets—always valued for their fiber and protein content. “Mung beans are considered a healthy food in every sense,” she says.
For the uninitiated, mung beans face a cultural learning curve.
And now they’re being repositioned for the future. As the world faces climate crisis, food insecurity, and supply chain disruptions, ingredients like mung beans, which are nutritionally dense, drought-resistant, and fast-growing, are being reimagined as potential solutions. From egg replacement to plant-based protein powder, this bean is taking on new forms.
Kaitlin Grady, director of strategic partnerships and public affairs at the lab-grown meat company Clever Carnivore, explains that mung bean proteins offer unique functional benefits: “They have gelling, emulsifying, and water-holding properties which make them effective, useful, and texture-critical in egg and dairy analogs,” she says. That science underpins products like Just Egg’s liquid scramble and frozen folded egg.
But mung beans aren’t a newly discovered functional miracle; they’ve been cultivated for thousands of years and may offer a strategic, delicious answer to the question of diversifying our protein sources. Grady points out that they are fast-growing, require significantly less water than animal-based proteins, making them an increasingly viable solution to a changing climate where “water scarcity becomes a defining issue of food security.”
Grady, like Vijay and Vasavada, believe that mung beans are poised for a broader breakthrough. “If backed by the right innovation and storytelling, I think they could easily become a top-tier protein source,” she says.
That might mean more consumer-friendly products like Just Egg; broader rebranding efforts that position mung beans as a global superfood, backed by chefs, restaurants, and industry leaders; and strategic investment in supply chains to bring costs down and improve consistency at scale. As Punyaratabandhu puts it, “The question isn’t just whether mung beans can go global but how we choose to introduce and frame them in the global culinary imagination.”
What makes the mung bean especially compelling now isn’t just its adaptability; it’s that it keeps showing up in moments of tradition, scarcity, and invention. Maybe that’s why the mung bean is so timeless. Across both centuries and continents, this little legume keeps finding new ways to feed us.