Buying:   Whole mung beans are easily available in South, East and Southeast Asian markets, and the dal is available in any market serving an Indian community.

Storing:   Keep beans or dal cool and dry in a sealed container and mark the container by date purchased. Technically they'll last for years without spoiling - BUT in practice a year is maximum. With age they cook less and less well until they simply will not soften, no matter how long you soak them and how long you cook them.

Soaking:   Whole mung beans need to be soaked at least 4 hours and preferably 5. You'll need 2-1/4 cups of soaking water for every cup of beans. The dal needs to be soaked for at least a half hour, but if it's old even a couple hours won't help much.

Cooking:   Whole soaked beans will cook in about 45 minutes. Unsoaked they'll need at least more like an hour, and they tend to fall apart a lot more than soaked beans. Soaked dal should be cooked for around 1/2 hour depending on how soft you want it. In India it's normally cooked until like a thick soup, but if the dal is old it will never soften.

Mung Bean Sprouts
In India, whole mung beans are often sprouted before cooking, but only until the root tail is about 1/2 inch and the leaf end is just emerging. For Chinese and Southeast Asian use bean sprouts are fully sprouted to about 3 inches long and when the first real leaves start to unfold.

Buying and Storing:   Any market serving an East or Southeast Asian community, most produce stores and many supermarkets will have these. Look for very crisp white stems with no sign of discoloration. The root end will always be discolored as in the photo, and they will often have some of the green shells adhering to the leaf end, but those should rinse away.

Prep: In general, you just rinse them. In Korea, no respectable housewife would think of serving bean sprouts without neatly snapping off the ugly root end, but we're not usually that picky in North America. Sometimes packages with the root end cut off can be found in Korean markets, but more often that's done with the larger soybean sprouts.

Cooking:   Less is best. In North America we often serve them raw, but in East Asia where nothing is served raw (due to traditional agricultural practices) they are generally cooked just until no longer brittle. In some cases they are squeezed dry after a brief cooking.

Bean Thread Noodles
These noodles are much used in East and Southeast Asia. While they are produced in many forms, one of the most common is a 2 ounce skein as shown in the photo. This is the ideal size for many recipes. The photo specimen was 5 inches long and made of strands 0.025 inches (0.6 mm) diameter.

Raw, these noodles look almost exactly the same as Rice Sticks, but they must not be confused. Cooked they are totally different and not at all interchangeable.

Buying & Storing:   These can be found in any market serving an East or Southeast Asian community - and in most supermarkets. In a cool, very dry place they will keep for two or three years without degrading significantly.

Cooking:   These noodles are always soaked in warm water for about 20 minutes (soaking longer isn't going to further soften them). They are then added to recipes at the very last moment and given the minimum cooking that will bring them up to temperature.

Buying:   This product is most likely available in Korean markets, and elsewhere. It will usually be stocked refrigerated with similar blocks of other gels..