Red lentil dahl: forty minutes, with the spices fried at the end
Red lentils need no soaking and collapse on their own after twenty minutes, which makes dahl one of the fastest dinners you can cook from scratch. What separates a good dahl from a bland soup is the tarka: spices fried separately in hot fat and poured over just before serving. Skip that step and the result is healthy and dull.
Your own work in that: 40 min.
- Preparation 10 min
- Cooking 25 min
- Tempering 5 min
Step by step
0 / 6 doneRinse the lentils and soften the onion
Rinse the lentils in a sieve until the water runs clear. Heat the oil in a wide pot and fry the finely diced onion 6 minutes, until soft and starting to colour. Add the grated ginger and crushed garlic and fry 1 minute.
Ingredients: 300 g red split lentils · 800 ml water or vegetable stock · 1 pcs onion · 3 cloves garlic · 20 g fresh ginger · 300 g tomatoes · 1 tsp ground cumin · 2 tsp curry powder · ½ tsp chilli flakes · 200 ml coconut milk · 2 tbsp rapeseed oil · 1½ tsp salt · ½ pcs lemon, juice
TipRed lentils are never soaked: they have no husk, so they take up water immediately and collapse in 20 minutes. Rinsing removes the dust and surface starch that otherwise give grey foam and a floury aftertaste.
Onion golden, then ginger and garlicFry the spices in the fat
Add the cumin, curry powder and chilli straight to the hot fat and fry, stirring constantly, for 45 seconds, until fragrant and slightly darker. Only then add the tomatoes.
TipMost of the aromatic compounds in ground spices dissolve far better in fat than in water. Added later, to the lentils and water, they stay a powder suspended in soup and taste raw. Watch the clock: after a minute they turn bitter.
Forty-five seconds, until darker and fragrantSimmer the lentils
Add the lentils and water, bring to the boil and skim the foam. Simmer on low heat 20 minutes with the lid ajar, stirring every few minutes and scraping the bottom, until the lentils collapse completely and the dahl thickens.
TipLentil starch settles on the base and catches within minutes, and a scorched dahl cannot be rescued. Drag a wooden spoon across the bottom, not just through the surface.
Twenty minutes, stirred across the bottomAdd the coconut milk and season
Pour in the coconut milk, add the salt and cook 3 minutes more. Take off the heat and add the lemon juice. The texture should be like a thick cream soup: a spoon leaves a trail that closes slowly. Too thick? Add boiling water.
TipSalt goes in only now, because the dahl reduces and thickens a lot: only at the end can you tell how much there is and how much salt it needs. Lemon always off the heat, because boiling drives off its freshness and leaves only sourness.
Coconut milk, salt, lemon off the heatMake the tarka
Heat the ghee in a small pan, add the cumin seeds and fry 30 seconds, until they pop and smell nutty. Add the sliced garlic and chilli and fry another 30–40 seconds, until the garlic is golden. Take the pan off the heat immediately.
Ingredients: 30 g ghee or oil · 1 tsp cumin seeds · ½ tsp chilli flakes · 2 cloves garlic
TipGarlic in hot fat goes from golden to burnt in a dozen seconds, and burnt garlic is bitter enough to ruin the whole tempering. Pull the pan a shade early: it keeps cooking in the residual heat.
Cumin popping, garlic golden, pan off the heatServe
Spoon the dahl into bowls, pour the hot tarka straight from the pan over the surface so it spreads, and scatter with herbs. Serve with basmati rice. It keeps 4 days in the fridge and thickens; reheat with a splash of water and make the tarka fresh.
Ingredients: 300 g basmati rice · ½ bunch flat-leaf parsley or coriander
Tarka poured straight from the pan
Before you start
Without coconut milk
Two spoons of butter stirred in at the end, or 100 g natural yogurt added off the heat. Yogurt dropped into boiling dahl will split — temper it first with a spoonful of the hot soup.
With spinach
Two handfuls of spinach stirred in for the last 2 minutes. It disappears into the lentils, adds colour, and makes one bowl genuinely enough for dinner.
Other lentils
Green and brown lentils hold their shape and need 35–40 minutes, giving a grainy rather than creamy dahl. For this recipe use red split lentils only, also sold as masoor dal.
