Cooking Lentils or Dals

One day I arrived home to find that Shilpesh had put Rajma and Masoor dal in the cooker in the hopes to make a dal of the variety Aditya likes. Aditya is extremely fond of the Madras Lentils that can be got in Costco. I really think it tastes more like Dal Makhani, but may be they do make something similar in Madras/ Chennai.

I am happy Shilpesh is trying to help me cook , but that was indeed a minor disaster as he had not soaked the dry dal’s before cooking them.  Well it should be the same as Toor dal reasoned Shilpi.  Unfortunately it is not.  Rajma and Masoor dal need to be soaked overnight and then pressure cooked or they would take a much longer time to cook in the pressure cooker.  The split dal’s like split Toor, split moong and split urad are the onces which can be cooked without the soaking step.  All whole dals turn out better when soaked overnight.

This incident and a question regarding dal’s in a yahoo group I frequent, got me thinking regarding the various dals we use and how best to cook them. The information I have been uncovering during my research has been facinating.  I plan to write a series of posts titled Dal’s in Indian Cookery.  It would be interesting to see what I will be able to uncover about each dal and the various ways to cook it.