With the help of a pressure cooker, this may very well be the dish with the best bang for your buck. It comes together in about 10 minutes but tastes like it’s been caramelizing and simmering all day. For your pittance of effort you’ll be handsomely rewarded with a soul-satisfying bowl of lentils with an unbelievable amount of smile-inducing umami. Charring ginger and garlic aren’t traditional Indian techniques as far as I’m aware, but it’s a very quick way to create a bundle of flavor, a technique I borrowed from Vietnamese Phở. I also love the smoky notes it lends to the finished dal. Throw these charred aromatics into a pressure cooker along with the lentils and a handful of other ingredients, and 7 minutes later you’ll be rewarded with a rich creamy dal that’s packed with so much flavor, you’d swear there was pork hiding amongst the legumes. Once cooked, the lentils are seasoned with salt and a little sugar before being splashed with some tempered oil. Whether you use ghee, mustard oil or vegetable oil, the smooth dal is made creamier by adding fat at the end, and the toasted spices punctuate each mouthful of dal, releasing a different earthy flavor with each crunchy bite. In case you’re wondering why I wait to add the salt until after the dal is cooked, it’s because salt tends to make legumes take much longer to soften. You may also be wondering why I don’t add any onions. Caramelizing onions properly takes a good deal of time, and these lentils are so flavorful without them, that I tend to leave them out most of the time. Still, if have a batch of frozen caramelized onions, it’s a quick way to add even more flavor. My favorite way to serve this is with a few rounds of pillowy naan, and my friend Bee over at Rasa Malaysia has a fantastic Naan recipe.
📖 Recipe
