Soupy salon dal

July 10, 2010 at 9:38 pm (B plus (3.5 stars, like a lot), Beans, Derek's faves, Indian, Website / blog)

I love dal in restaurants but I’ve never really found a recipe for it that I want to make over and over.  So when I saw a recipe in Salon for Dal Chawal, based on a recipe from a home cook, I decided to try it.  Apparently dal chawal is dal mixed with rice.  But I decided to skip the rice (Derek isn’t a fan of white rice) and just make the dal.  But then I went to make the recipe and I realized that it’s kind of crazy.  It calls for 1/2 cup of dal and 5 Tbs. of vegetable oil!  I just couldn’t do it. 

I looked around online and most dal chawal recipes seemed to call for 1 cup of dal and 2 Tbs. of oil.  I compromised with 3/4 cup of dal and 2 Tbs. of olive oil.  The recipe calls for 1.5 tsp. of salt, but the dal turned out extremely salty.  Derek liked it but I thought it was excessive.  So in this recipe I cut the salt to 1 tsp.

I thought 5 cups of water would be excessive, but actually the dal ended up a nice, if quite soupy, consistency.  The flavor (besides being too salty) was excellent.  The asafetida didn’t even bother me. I’ll definitely make this recipe again.  Next time I might try making 1 cup of dal though.

Rating: B+
Derek rating:  A-

Update March 2014:

I made this recipe again using 2 cups of dal, which is four times as much as called for. But I didn’t multiple all the other ingredients by four. I used 4 Tbs. of oil (instead of 20) and 10 cups of water (instead of 20). I added 1.5 tsp. of salt (instead of 6), but still it yielded a quite salty dal. I used all four teaspoons of mustard seeds and cumin, but less garlic and chilies and cilantro than called for. It still came out well.