Beyond the Everyday Poriyal: Three Greens Worth Knowing

Most keerai guides stop at spinach, mulai keerai and maybe ponnanganni. A few greens sold in the same section rarely make it into general recipe writing at all, even though they have a long-standing place in traditional Tamil household cooking. Keezhanelli, pirandai and thoothuvalai are three of them — worth knowing simply as ingredients with their own preparation methods, distinct from any claims made about them.

Keezhanelli: small, low-growing, and cooked like any keerai

Keezhanelli grows low to the ground with small, neat leaflets arranged along thin stems, which makes it fiddlier to clean than a taller-growing green — expect more grit and more careful washing. In the kitchen it's treated the same way as any other everyday keerai: chopped fine, sautéed with a mustard-urad dal tempering, and cooked briefly until wilted. Some households make it into a thuvaiyal (a coarse, coconut-based chutney-style side) rather than a poriyal, grinding the cooked leaves with coconut, tamarind and green chilli.

Pirandai: a climbing vine cooked more like a vegetable than a leaf

Pirandai is a little different from the rest of this list — it's a climbing, succulent vine with thick, ridged, fleshy stems rather than delicate leaves, and it's cooked more like a firm vegetable than a soft green. The traditional preparation is a spiced, tangy chutney or thogayal, where the stem segments are cooked down with tamarind, chillies and spices until soft, then ground coarse. Some households also make a pirandai rasam, simmering the stems into the tamarind broth rather than grinding them. Because the stems are fibrous, they're usually cooked longer and more thoroughly than a leafy keerai would be.

Thoothuvalai: a strong-flavoured green used sparingly

Thoothuvalai has a distinctive, fairly assertive flavour, which is why it's typically used in smaller quantities and combined with other ingredients rather than cooked as a standalone poriyal. A common preparation is thoothuvalai rasam or a paruppu-based kootu, where the leaves are added to a lentil base along with the usual tamarind, tomato and spice mix, tempering their flavour rather than letting them dominate the dish. As with keezhanelli, thorough washing matters — the leaves tend to hold onto grit.

Cooking notes that apply across all three

• Wash thoroughly in a large bowl of water rather than a quick rinse — all three tend to carry more soil than firmer, taller-growing vegetables.
• Pirandai needs its outer ridged edges trimmed before cooking; the fleshy centre is what goes into the dish.
• Keezhanelli and thoothuvalai both cook down quickly once chopped — don't walk away from the pan.
• None of these are commonly sold ready-cleaned — plan a few extra minutes of prep compared with a standard bunch of mulai keerai.

These are traditional ingredients with real preparation methods, not curiosities — worth trying on their own terms if you've grown up hearing the names without ever cooking with them. They're stocked in the keerai category alongside the more familiar greens, and in vegetables for items like pirandai that straddle both. Express delivery in about 60 minutes if today is the day to finally try one.