One Pot Dal

Fast Recipe

This version of the recipe is incredibly fast. There’s nothing to cut, you literally pile a bunch of ingredients into the instapot and turn it on.

Add all the ingredients listed under “instapot”. Pressure cook for 12 minutes with the vent closed. Once done, vent out the steam.

Open the instapot and add some water and mix well. The dal should remain thick but pour easily enough.

Garnish with baby spinach or cilantro. If you’re using spinach, mix it in and the leaves should shrink in size due to heat.

Better Recipe

If you have more time on your hands, I recommend this version!

Add all the “instapot” ingredients except the ginger cube, cumin powder, coriander seed powder and chilli powder. Pressure cook for 12 minutes.

Prep the ingredients by finely chopping the green chillis, red onions and ginger.

When the instapot is almost done, we can start with the tadka. The tadka replaces the spice mix we used in the easy version.

Heat oil in a pan. You can test if it’s hot enough by dropping in a cumin seed. If it pops, it’s hot. Set flame to medium low and immediately add cumin seeds.

Add finely chopped red onions, green chillies and ginger. Green chillis can be substituted with serrano peppers (they’re bigger and spicier, so use half the number). You can also use a frozen ginger cube directly on the pan. Saute for 3-4 minutes.

Meanwhile, if the instapot is done, vent out the steam. Add 0.5 - 1 cup of water and mix well. Turn off the tadka pan and add it’s contents to the dal ready in the instapot.

Mix thoroughly. Add either cilantro or baby spinach leaves to garnish at the end.

Eat!

I normally eat it with a couple of phulkas! It also tastes great to eat it solo.

Tips

• Use frozen ginger cubes, they taste more fresh than ginger paste and don’t have preservatives
• You can do the tadka in the instapot in saute mode before you start. Downside - texture and flavors suffer since everything gets pressure cooked
• The fast recipe also uses no oil if you care about that 😉 You can also garnish with fresh onions (I love doing this with most north indian food!)
• For phulkas, I highly recommend “Phulka fresh”. They’re uncooked phulkas that you can make in a couple of minutes on a pan and much better + healthier than frozen naans / rotis / whatever else.