Dal is the main dish of Indian cuisine

The woman who inspired me to cook dal taught me how to cook dal in general. Before that, I still loved to bake, but no one could force me to cook everyday dishes. She simply asked for help in cooking in the kitchen (cutting, peeling something). And so her magic of the “dance of choosing spices” and her inspiration to prepare tastier dishes for the most expensive ones entered my heart, and for several years now I have not been kicked out of the kitchen.

Dal (Dhal) is an Indian soup made from mung beans or other legumes. This is one of the first dishes that I started cooking and still cook with pleasure.

What is dal?

Dal or dhal is the main dish of Indian cuisine, which is prepared on the basis of dal beans, vegetables, coconut milk, and a lot of spices. It is very easy to prepare, the soup turns out tasty, nutritious, and dal is rightly called a worthy response from vegetarians to those who claim that a person cannot live without meat.

The essence of the dish is to boil beans and vegetables to the point where they can be easily pureed. As in any Indian dish, there are a lot of spices in the soup, and they are not just a flavoring additive - maximum attention is paid to the selection and arrangement of spices. In India, dal is most often prepared from small moong peas or red lentils; in other countries, such as Russia, it can be cooked from peas.

Types of dal soup and their characteristics

Most of the components of the dal are identical, only the bean base changes. For example, dal makhani is cooked with black-eyed peas, but for Russian cuisine, dal can be made from regular peas. If you come across a recipe for dal tadka in Ayurveda, then don’t be surprised, just look at our recipe for dal fry and you will understand what kind of dish it is.

What is dal and how to prepare it? Read our traditional recipe

First, let's clear up the confusion in terms. Dal is both beans, of which there are more than 20 types, and pureed soups made from these beans. We'll talk about soup, but let's not forget about beans, because you can make soup from different beans and get different flavors and variations.

Dal - basic cooking principles

Any beans should be washed and soaked for several hours before cooking. An hour is enough for red lentils, 3-4 hours for green or peas. The beans are cooked until they can be easily mashed with your fingers. Salt the dal at the end, when the soup is ready. 5 minutes before the soup is ready, heat the ghee and fry the spices in it. Lastly, add coconut milk (this is not necessary for us) and garnish with herbs.

Ghee butter is easy to make - just take a little more butter than the recipe calls for, melt it and skim off the foam. What will remain is a clear oil that will not foam or fizz when heated - this is Ghee oil. Pour it into the frying pan where you will fry the spices. The classic dal spice mix consists of garam masala (a basic Indian spice blend), cumin, turmeric, ginger, salt and asafoetida. If there is no garam masala, you can make it yourself, choosing spices according to your mood, but in any case, it must contain five main components - turmeric, coriander, pepper, ginger, garlic. Without this, the taste and aroma of the dal will not even come close to the original. It is very important not to burn anything and add spices consistently. First, fry the cumin in a hot ghee, then ginger, garlic, coriander and then the garam masala mixture. In total, the spices are fried for a minute to one and a half with continuous stirring. There should be three times more oil than spices. If the recipe contains tomatoes, then they are added to the fried spices and then the sauce is poured into the almost finished lentils.

Composition and calorie content of black lentils

It should be noted that the name “black gram” refers to unchopped and unpeeled beans of this variety. Once the hulls are removed and crushed, the name "white lentils" is used and the chemical composition of the product changes

In particular, after removal of the shell, the amino acid content is minimal.

The calorie content of black lentils urad dal is 390 kcal per 100 g, of which:

Proteins - 24 g;
Fats - 6 g;
Carbohydrates - 60 g;
Dietary fiber - up to 9 g.

The predominant vitamins are: group B - thiamine, riboflavin, choline, pantothenic acid, pyridoxine. The content of ascorbic acid and niacin equivalent can be noted.

Minerals per 100 g:

Calcium - 138-154 mg;
Phosphorus - 385 mg;
Iron - 7.57-9.1 mg.

Also, as part of black lentils, urad provided a significant amount of potassium, magnesium, manganese, copper, zinc, biotin, isoflavones, and anthocyanins.

Amino acids per 100 g:

Essential - 9-10 mg;
Replaceable - 14.1-15.6 g.

Among the essential acids, the most abundant are isoleucine, leucine, lysine and phenylalanine; among the replaceable ones are arginine and glycine.

Black gram porridge with water is an ideal replenishment of energy reserves for athletes and people involved in physical labor. In the finished porridge, beneficial substances are transformed slightly.

People who constantly experience increased physical activity need to restore protein losses. To do this, the body produces creatinine, and for its stable synthesis, 3 amino acids are needed - methionine, arginine and glycine. Despite the fact that the body synthesizes these compounds on its own, with a highly active lifestyle, the consumption is greater than required to maintain shape. Boiled black lentils contain a high total amount of these substances - 1.14 g/100 g.

A serving of 150-200 g will help a bodybuilder form biceps of the required volume, without including artificially made drugs in his diet. This amount of porridge provides 90% of the body's need for folic acid and iron.

Red Lentil Dal (Traditional Recipe)

Ingredients: 200 gr. dry lentils, 2 liters of water, 2 carrots, 2 tomatoes, 3 tea. l. turmeric, 5-7 tbsp. l. ghee butter, salt to taste, 2 tbsp. l. garam oil mixture, salt to taste. You also need one coconut, but in our conditions it can be replaced with cream (to soften the taste).

Wash the lentils and soak for an hour. Set to simmer and cook until the lentils are soft. Scald the tomatoes with boiling water and remove the skin. Cut the pulp into cubes. Grate the carrots. When the lentils are soft, heat the ghee, fry the spices, then add the tomatoes and carrots. Lightly fry the vegetables, add water to form a sauce and transfer it to the pan with the lentils. After five minutes, remove from heat, add salt to taste, and chop the lentils with a masher or blender. Pour coconut milk or cream into the prepared dal, heat (but do not boil!) and let sit for 5-10 minutes. The dal is served in small bowls, garnished with greens.

Dal is a healthy, colorful, tasty and very easy to prepare food.

In addition, dal is very tolerant of substituting components, so it can be prepared even without a complete list of necessary products.

Moong dal recipe

We have already said that dal is the national dish of Indian cuisine, but, as is often the case in cooking, there are a lot of recipes for preparing the dish. We suggest you prepare one of them. To do this you need to take:

a mixture of different varieties of lentils - 1 cup;
large head of onion;
tomatoes – 4-6 pieces;
garlic – 4-5 cloves;
turmeric – 1 teaspoon;
ginger to your taste;
vegetable oil – 2 tablespoons;
butter (for preparing dressing) – 3 tablespoons;
cumin – half a teaspoon;
mustard seeds – 1 teaspoon;
dill or cilantro – 1 bunch;
chili pepper – 1-2 pieces;
vegetable broth - 3 cups;
pepper and salt to taste.

Preparation:

The lentil mixture must be thoroughly sorted, washed, and soaked for 2-3 hours.
Pour vegetable oil into a saucepan and bring to a boil.
Chop garlic, ginger and onion. Place in a saucepan in this order: garlic, after 2-3 minutes onion, after 2-3 minutes ginger. Add the diced tomatoes and simmer until all the ingredients soften.
We put everything into a saucepan, add the lentils, dilute with vegetable broth, and cook until fully cooked.
While the base is cooking, let's make the dressing.
Heat the butter in a frying pan, skim off the foam, add cumin, mustard seeds, and chili pepper. Fry until the mustard seeds begin to “jump” out of the pan, exploding from the heat. Transfer the contents of the frying pan to the ingredients in the pan, simmer for one minute, turn off.

Garnish the dal fry with finely chopped cilantro or dill.

Basic version of dal soup

The sheer amount of ingredients that go into the basic recipe is impressive and makes the dal seem like a complex dish. Let's not be scared, because in India, dhal is prepared in many families just for dinner. So, here's what we'll take for this dish:

orange lentils – 400 grams;
bell pepper – 2 pieces;
cauliflower – 5-6 inflorescences;
onions – 2 large heads;
tomatoes - 3 pieces;
carrots – 1 piece;
garlic – 5 cloves;
dried ginger – 1 teaspoon;
turmeric, curry – 1 teaspoon each;
zira – ½ teaspoon;
salt to taste;
ghee oil for frying spices;
basil, parsley, cilantro for sprinkling when serving.

Preparation:

Sort the lentils and soak for 2-3 hours. Dhal can be prepared from any variety of lentils. In our recipe we used orange, which cooks faster.
Pour the soaked lentils into a saucepan, add 2 liters of water, wait for the water to boil, reduce the heat intensity, and cook for about half an hour.
Let's move on to processing vegetables. We peel the onion and garlic, remove the grains from the bell pepper, and wash all the vegetables.
Cut the sweet pepper into rings, finely chop the onion and carrots, and cut the tomatoes into small cubes.
Cut the garlic cloves into large pieces.
Boil the cauliflower inflorescences. We don’t pour out the broth, we will need it for the soup.
We get Ghee butter (see description above). Pour the transparent mixture into a frying pan and heat it up. Add carrots. Fry for 2-3 minutes.
Add cumin, turmeric, and curry to the pan one by one. Stir and let fry for 3-4 minutes.
Pour vegetable oil into another frying pan and fry the onion in it until golden brown. Add ginger and garlic to it, warm it up a little, and send it to another frying pan with carrots and spices. We don't turn off the fire.
Add tomato cubes and half rings of bell pepper to the simmering mass. Introduce cauliflower. Close the lid and simmer for another 3-4 minutes.
Add the prepared vegetables to the lentils in the pan. Add broth. Sprinkle with salt and black pepper. Simmer for one minute. Turn it off. Wait 5 minutes for the soup to steep.
When pouring Indian dal soup into bowls, sprinkle it with herbs.

Common types of dal

Dal - how to use it correctly

If you combine dal with other protein-rich foods: grains, nuts and dairy products, the body's absorption of protein increases.

Mung dal or mung are small green or pale yellow oval-shaped grains. Green mung bean is consumed sprouted and used in soups, purees, and porridges. Split and peeled moong dal, pale yellow in color, is widely used for preparing soups, thick purees, sauces and main courses.

Mung bean for germination

Moong dal for healthy eating

Urad dal are small black or ivory grains with a rectangular shape. Grayish-white beans are the same as urad dal, only without the black skin. Black urad dal (sabat urad) is often used to make dried bean snacks and is also combined with rice. Split without skin (urad dal) is used for making purees, soups, and also in the form of flour for snacks and sweets. Split with skin (chilke urad dal) is used to prepare light fried snacks.

Urad dal for healthy eating

Channa dal is a type of small chickpea. Channa dal grains are yellow in color and round, larger than mung beans. It is usually sold split and peeled. Used for making thick purees. You can grind it into flour, add spices, make a batter and fry the pancakes. Also used in ground form to make chutney (sauce), sweets and snacks.

Toor dal is pale yellow and round grains, larger than channa dal. This type of bean is obtained from the fruit of a legume plant known in the West as “pigeon peas”. These peas are used both in dried form and processed into flour. Used for making soups with the addition of vegetables.

Matar dal is a well-known yellow and green pea that is sold in any grocery store. Peas are usually used in split form. Yellow peas are ideal for making purees and thin or thick soups.

The essence of dal soup

Along with the question of what gave, another one arises. How to cook it? The bottom line is that the beans and vegetables must be boiled so much that it is possible to mix everything into a puree. Naturally, you need to add spices to the dish - this is an integral ingredient of Indian cuisine. Thus, cooked beans will replace any meat (in terms of vitamin content) and feed everyone around you. India is a country where everyone adheres to the principles of vegetarianism, so people spent a lot of time creating dal soup.

It is also interesting that there are a lot of varieties of beans, but preference is given to red varieties, followed by green and black fruits. It is most beneficial to eat dal soup in the summer, when it is really hot outside. The dish is perfectly filling, and in winter it also allows you to warm up.

General information about Indian cuisine

The country has preserved certain national characteristics and traditions of Indian cuisine - they give priority to vegetables and a huge variety of spices, however, you will not find beef on the menu. A vegetarian will undoubtedly feel like he is in gastronomic heaven when he finds himself in India. Local residents do not eat meat or even fish.

In the past, the Mongols and Muslims introduced various recipes into Indian cuisine. In addition, the characteristics of national Indian cuisine were influenced by the religious views of the residents - more than 80% of the local population profess Hinduism, which excludes any violence. The essence of religion is that every living being is spiritual, containing a divine particle. That is why most people in India are vegetarians, but at the same time Indian national dishes have a rich, bright taste, spicy, and oily.

The basis of the diet is rice, beans, vegetables

Since we are talking about vegetarianism within a particular state, a huge variety of treats from cereals, vegetables, and legumes have appeared in the local cuisine. The most famous is sabji - a vegetable stew with lentils, seasoned with various spices. It is eaten with rice and bread cakes.

A separate volume in the encyclopedia of traditional Indian cuisine will have to be devoted to seasonings and spices. The most popular is curry; by the way, it is not only a spice, but also the name of an Indian dish with a bright orange color. It is this seasoning that gives the treat its thick aroma and unique taste.

There are many seasonings mixed into curry; it would be very difficult to list them all; Indians themselves probably won’t be able to accurately name the recipe. It is known for certain that the composition contains: cayenne, red and black pepper, cardamom, ginger, coriander, paprika, cloves, cumin, nutmeg. Although the composition of curry may vary, it always contains turmeric. It is noteworthy that Indian families have a personal recipe for making curry; it is carefully passed down from generation to generation.

Flatbread instead of bread

Baking bread in the form in which it is baked in Europe is not customary in India. Serve flatbread or thin pita bread. A traditional Indian dish called chapati accompanies every meal from the first course to dessert.

The cooking recipe is quite simple, every housewife can repeat it - mix coarse flour, salt, water, fry the flatbreads without oil (if you cook outdoors, use an open fire). The finished flatbread resembles a ball because it is inflated, vegetables and legumes are added inside, and eaten simply with sauce.

Another common type of pastry in India is samosas - fried triangular pies with various fillings. Most often they are prepared for the festive table. Real national samosas have a tender, crispy, melting dough; the filling must be evenly heated.

A common dessert is sweet yogurt.

In India, many dishes are prepared from milk. Yogurt is no exception; fruits and berries are added to it.

In addition, yogurt is the basis of a cooling drink and at the same time a dessert - lassi. Add water and ice to it and beat until thick foam forms. The result is a drink that is perfectly refreshing in hot weather. Fruits, ice cream or cream are also added to the drink.

Some useful tips:

Almost all food in India is very spicy, so if you don’t like peppery dishes, tell the waiters - know spicy, they will still add spices to the treat, but much less;
in restaurants, and even more so in markets, hygiene rules are not always followed, so it is strongly recommended not to try raw fruits and vegetables before purchasing;
in India there is an acute shortage of clean, drinking water, it is strictly forbidden to drink tap water, you need to buy bottled water;
It is also best to avoid drinking ice, as it is made from tap water.

Origin of the dish

Dal soup is the national dish of India, which is very easy to prepare and you can enjoy the taste for as long as you like. In addition, it contains many useful substances and vitamins.

For example, soup contains a lot of protein and can be combined with different ingredients. Tomatoes, garlic, lemon juice, coconut milk, curry and more are often added to it.

In order to understand what dal is, you just need to decipher the name of the dish. It means "beans". Thus, when starting to cook, Indians choose their favorite variety of this plant and make a real culinary masterpiece out of it.

Most often, puree soup can be found in places such as Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Naples, and this is a mistake of modern times, because you need to prepare an amazing dish in every country.

It is healthy, simple and incredibly tasty. Hot soup can be prepared in various ways, you just need to choose the most suitable one.

Aromatic winter mung dal bean soup

The result was a simple, but very tasty, satisfying and aromatic soup. A great option for a winter family lunch. You can puree the soup in a blender, or you can leave it the way you like.

There are many different spices in the recipe, but this is a case where you can’t omit a single one. And don’t be lazy to look for coriander seeds and cumin - you will be rewarded with the wonderful aroma and taste of the resulting soup. Truly oriental!

Advice. Always fry spices separately from the soup - no more than a couple of minutes and only in oil containing saturated fat. For example, in coconut or ghee oil. This will reveal the taste and aroma of your spices more fully. I wrote in detail about why you can’t fry in vegetable oil here and here.

Why is moong dal so good?

First, it is rich in protein, which is easily digestible when prepared correctly.
Secondly, it's high in iron, which is great news for vegans and vegetarians.
Thirdly, it is also a good source of vitamins such as thiamine, vitamin B6, pantothenic acid, magnesium, phosphorus, potassium, zinc, vitamin C, vitamin K, riboflavin, niacin, folate, copper and manganese.

Soaking is everything!

My package of beans (mung dal from Mistral) says that no soaking is required. At the same time, the recommended cooking time is 1.5-2 hours. I will say right away that this is not the best option for cooking beans. Prolonged cooking destroys beneficial microelements, and the taste of overcooked legumes is a so-so pleasure.

It turns out much tastier and healthier if you pre-soak the beans for several hours, or better yet, overnight. This applies to all legumes except red lentils.

So, mung dal bean soup. To print the recipe, click on the right ⇒

Aromatic mung dal bean soup

Servings: 2-3

Ingredients

150 grams raw mung dal beans (mung dal)
1 onion
1 sweet pepper
1 large tomato
1/3 hot green pepper
a bunch of parsley, two sprigs of cilantro
1 tbsp. finely chopped ginger root
1 tsp. turmeric
1/2 tsp. coriander seeds
1 tsp. cumin
3-5 glasses of water
2 tbsp. l. ghee or coconut oil
sea salt or Himalayan salt - to taste

Preparation

Wash the moong dal and soak it overnight in drinking water. In the morning, rinse it again, put it in a saucepan with water and let it cook, adding turmeric to the water.
At this time, chop the onion and ginger. I grind them together in a blender.
Finely chop the sweet and hot peppers, and the tomato into large pieces.
Heat the oil in a frying pan or saucepan. Add sweet and hot peppers and saute them for a couple of minutes, stirring.
Then add onion with ginger, cumin and coriander. Leave for another 1-2 minutes, stirring, and turn off. Do not overheat the spices, otherwise they will burn!
After 20-30 minutes (depending on the degree of soaking of the moong dal), taste the beans. If it is soft, add vegetables with spices, as well as tomatoes, to the pan. Cover with a lid.
After 3-5 minutes, add salt and herbs, turn off.

3.1

Bon appetit!

Moong dal nutritional data source: nutritiondata.com.

With love, Valentina Gorbunova