Dal Makhani

This is one of my favourite dal and I learnt to make it from my sister. It is a much loved dal from Punjab and a must during the cold winter days. It is a hearty meal just to have this dal with rice. It is whole black lentil cooked with spices and loads of butter in it. I am of course not at all in the favour of using a lot of butter all the time..… just a small dollop now and then. So my version is a healthy one and you can be as naughty as you wish by adding the amount of butter you want.

I also cook a large amount of dal, for at least a couple of meals as it does take a long time to cook. Most people would cool the lentils in a pressure cooker but I prefer not to. I sometimes soak the lentils overnight but it is not necessary to do so. Some people would like to add a small amount of soda bicarbonate to help soften this very hard lentil quickly. However I do find that the final taste of the dal makhani does alter a bit. I have now resorted to adding the required salt at the start of boiling the lentils and it works out well for me.

Ingredients

I roughly take 8 handfuls of the whole black lentils (you should take about 200 gms)

You can add one handful of red beans to this as well.

A medium onion finely chopped

4 cloves of garlic finely chopped

1 inch of ginger finely chopped

Green chillies finely chopped (have deliberately not written how many as you need to put according to how hot you can take, I generally put really hot green long chillies about 2 -3)

Tomatoes (2 medium fresh tomatoes or half a tin of tomatoes)

Teaspoon of whole cumin

A couple of small dried red chillies

4 cloves

A small piece of cinnamon stick

3 teaspoon olive oil or any vegetable oil

Salt to taste

Red chilli powder 1 teaspoon

Cumin powder 1 teaspoon

Coriander powder 3 teaspoons

Turmeric powder 1 teaspoon

Handful of chopped fresh coriander

Preparation

Boil the lentils (both black gram and red beans) after covering it well. The water should be 2 inches about the lentils. Bring it to boil and the medium simmer until the lentils go soft. If you add your salt at this point it will speed up the cooking time. But do remember that I use estimate of salt from practice and that water will evaporate and be added once the lentil gets cooked.

Make the temper / tadka – Add the oil and whole cumin to a pan and heat. As the cumin starts turning brown add the dried red chillies, cloves and cinnamon stick to it. Once that heats up add the finely chopped onion, garlic, ginger and green chillies. Cook till onions begin to lightly brown. Then add the tomatoes and the rest of the powdered spices. Cook till you can see the oil rise back out of the masala (paste) you have made. Then add this masala to the cooked lentils. Slowly simmer the lentils to completely get the taste of the spices into the lentils. Just before serving you can add the fresh chopped coriander.

Now the time to add the makhan (butter) for the dal makhani is once it has been cooked. So you can add butter to you taste. I would suggest that it is unsalted butter or the freshly made butter as the taste does differ if you used salted butter. The dish is best eaten with plain boiled or jeera rice (cumin rice). It can also be thickened to eat it with parathas.

There are obviously versions of this dal from different places/ chefs/families. The variations are of spices and amount of butter. In the old days the food was cooked over a coal fire and this was kept banked with glowing coals at night to keep the house warm. This fire was used to cook the lentil and so it slowly cooked over night and was well softened by the time the masala was added and returned to the heat. I have seen this being replicated in slow cooker but from the time that masala and lentils are mixed.

Here are some of the recipes I found that look good too -

http://vegeyum.wordpress.com/2008/06/23/dalmakhani/

http://vegeyum.wordpress.com/2011/10/29/dal-makhani-nilgiri/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dal_makhani (an informative page about the background with a recipe)

http://www.tarladalal.com/Dal-Makhani-%28-Low-Fat-Recipe-%29-3570r

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gq9rHij2z20 (fairly good if you need to watch someone do it)

http://www.indianfoodforever.com/daal/daal-makhani.html
 

Try it as I am sure you will come to love it especially on cold chilly night it warms you up nicely. I find that most of my cooking I do it on estimate that comes from practice of many years and so you do need to think of the amounts in terms of your tastes and the amount of lentils to be comparable with what measure you normally use for lentils for your family. Enjoy!