RCP: Kabuli Chana Dal

2 cups Chana Dal
1/2 tsp. cumin seeds
1 small onion, chopped
1 TBSP. minced fresh garlic
1 TBSP. minced fresh ginger
1/2 tsp. gr. turmeric
1 TBSP. gr. coriander
1/2-1 tsp. cayenne pepper
3 cups tomato sauce or crushed tomatoes (I used diced in puree)
coarse salt to taste
2 TBSP. lime juice

Cook Dal in 4 cups water (I used chicken broth) until tender (this took about 30 min.)
Pureé half, using a hand-held blender. Set aside. (I skipped this step)
Heat a non-stick pan over moderate heat, add evoo. Sauté cumin seeds about 10 seconds, add onion, garlic and ginger. Stir until onion is translucent. Add turmeric, coriander, and cayenne. Cook, stirring for about 20 seconds, being careful not to burn. Add tomato product. Bring to boil, reduce heat and let simmer 1 minute. Add chopped and puréed chana dal. Cook, stirring 2-3 minutes to allow flavors to blend. Add salt to taste. Remove from heat, add lime juice and stir.
Serving suggestions - Serve over a bed of one-half rice and one-half barley. Top with chutney or fat-free sour cream.

Note - very tasty - lime was a nice touch - recipe is from Phillips Farms in Pescadero where I bought the Dal

Karen, that sounds delicious, thank you for posting it ! Did you need to soak the dal first at all ? Definitely on the list to try - I think it will go really nicely with a tomato rice recipe I found today.

Phipps Country Store and Farm - is where I ordered the dal and who supplied the recipe for me.

Celia, I washed but did not soak. I put into boiling chicken broth and simmered for about 30 minutes, stirring often. Since it is the first time I cooked this, not sure how tender they are supposed to be. Right now, they are like a garbanzo bean. I like it!

Karen, I made this tonight, and it was delicious, thank you ! I soaked the dal first, as I didn't want to have to puree any either. Surprisingly, I actually HAD fresh and ground tumeric this time, so I used both in the recipe as specified, but I wasn't sure if that was a typo ? Made a huge batch, so I'm going to freeze some. We had it with the tomato rice I mentioned above (also a very nice recipe), and baked tomatoes stuffed with leftover lamb kheema. Given that I started the day with Jo Ann's chai recipe, it's been a very interesting food day.

Karen, I made this tonight, and it was delicious, thank you ! I soaked the dal first, as I didn't want to have to puree any either. Surprisingly, I actually HAD fresh and ground tumeric this time, so I used both in the recipe as specified, but I wasn't sure if that was a typo ? Made a huge batch, so I'm going to freeze some. We had it with the tomato rice I mentioned above (also a very nice recipe), and baked tomatoes stuffed with leftover lamb kheema. Given that I started the day with Jo Ann's chai recipe, it's been a very interesting food day.

The recipe calls for 1/2 tsp. turmeric

Sorry I have edited it. You would think that after working for the police dept, and being responsible for public notices and newsletters that I would have a better handle on editing. NOT!

No worries, Karen, it was really nice with the extra turmeric, actually !

I found dried kabuli chana dal at our local Indian grocery store and bought some. This recipe is next in the queue, once I've eaten the accumulated leftovers from last week's cooking. I've got Sausage and Porcini Ragu (recipe from FLDG), Kung Pao Gai, Parsi Dhansak, and Punjabi Fenugreek Chicken to get through. Oh, life is so hard . . . .

-Paul W.

I made my own variation of this tonight.

It was delicious!!!

I didn't have time to soak the whole chickpeas. I therefore decided to opt for what all of the whole kabuli chana dal recipes in my Indian cookbooks called for--which is essentially cooking the bejesus out of them! I cooked the raw, dried chickpeas for 2 hours over a moderate simmer, using a total of 7 cups of water. I then proceeded to puree about half the dal with an immersion blender.

Aside from the much longer cooking time, the only other variation I made was to use mustard oil in place of the EVOO for frying the spice tarka. As is always the case with mustard oil, I heated it (2 TBS) over high heat until it started smoking, before adding the cumin seeds, and then the onions, ginger, and garlic. This is a classic Southern Indian technique.

From there I proceeded as directed in the recipe posted here. I used imported (into the USA) tomato puree. Alas, tomatoes are out of season here in New Hampshire, USA.

A much longer cooking of the dal is the only significant deviation I did from the original recipe posted here. If you soak the dal ahead of time for several hours, or if you use split chana dal, 1/2 hour seems OK as a cooking time.

If you start with whole, unsoaked, whole (kabluli) chana dal, I think something on the order of 2-3 hours is more appropriate as a cooking time. And you'll need more water.

Except for a much longer cooking time (and mustard oil [south India influence here] instead of EVOO), I followed this recipe verbatim, and I was EXTREMELY pleased with the results.

This one is a keeper.

-Paul W.

Paul, did you use chick peas or chana dal ? They're slightly different - the chana dal looks like a much smaller split version of the chick pea. There is more information here. Chana dal actually look a bit like both yellow split peas and moong dal (mung beans). Though I'm sure Karen's recipe would work perfectly well with chick peas !

I used a bag that I bought at the local Indian grocery store that was labeled "kabuli chana dal". They are smaller than your usual garbanzos/chick peas. The "kabuli" part means whole dal--not split. The store also sells bags labeled simply "chana dal" that are hulled and split.

One of my Indian cookbooks ("Lord Krishna's Cuisine") has a recipe for kabuli chana dal with tomato puree that is very similar to Karen's, except no onions or garlic (Vaishnavas don't eat those).

-Paul W.

I didn't know that - I thought Kabuli meant the recipe was from Kabul in Afghanistan. Really. I did !

This has been a fun thread, and all because we tried a new ingredient - now if only the governments could learn to work together as we all did with this new food. It would be great, would it not?

Having looked around the net a bit more, I'm not sure anymore just what the "kabuli" means.

I've found a few sites that claim "kabuli channa" (or chana) means "chickpeas". Other places that claim it's a smaller, darker-skinned variety, different from the standard larger, yellow US chickpea (this certainly is the kind that I bought under the name "kabuli chana dal"). Simple "channa dal" or "chana dal" seems to mean the same dried legume, but hulled and split in half. And "besam" is ground chickpea flour.

Whatever--the recipe Karen posted came out just fine with the whole legumes, with hull still on, and not soaked ahead of time. I just had to increase the cooking time. I'll have to try it with split and hulled channa dal, too. This is definitely a keeper recipe. Many thanks for posting it.

-Paul W.

Paul, did you use chick peas or chana dal ? They're slightly different - the chana dal looks like a much smaller split version of the chick pea. There is more information here.

What I used is the whole, unsplit version of what was shown at that website. They have a light-brown skin, somewhat darker than conventional chick peas. But when cooked the skin goes transparent and the insides are yellowish.

-Paul W.

I love Dal - but it does generate a lot of gas. I wonder why. What would counteract the gas production? Yogurt?

I love Dal - but it does generate a lot of gas. I wonder why. What would counteract the gas production? Yogurt?

Dried beans contain unusual sugars that the human intestine cannot digest and absorb. So they stay out there to act as food for methane and CO2-generating bacteria to feast on. Certain spices (known as carminatives), such as capsicum, ginger, onions, garlic, cumin, mustard seed, and curry leaves, retard the growth of these bacteria, and this is why these are popular ingredients in the spicy tarka or chaunk that is usually added to a dal either at the beginning or end of the cooking. Soaking helps, too, on two fronts. First, the offending complex sugars are water-soluble, so soaking lets these dissolve out of the dal, and you can be rid of a lot of them, provided you discard the soaking water. Second, if you're using whole dal the seeds will start germinating during the soaking process, and as they awaken they start metabolizing the offending complex sugars. But this isn't as significant with the hulled and split dal that are commonly used in Indian cooking.

So there's your biochemist's explanation. Basically, the spicier your dal, the less chance of a musical evening afterwards.

-Paul W.