While dal, a general word for dried lentils, pulses and beans, as well as the infinite variety of cooked dishes they’re made into, is an everyday staple across the Indian subcontinent, dal makhani is, according to chef Maunika Gowardhan, “in a league of its own”. It’s saved, in the main, for weddings and other celebrations – and not only because the longer you cook it, the better it gets. It’s also unapologetically rich; makhani means “buttery” in Hindi.
Niki Segnit sums the spirit of the dish up perfectly in Lateral Cooking, when she describes it as “the dal equivalent of Joël Robuchon’s famously opulent puree de pomme de terre, except you don’t even have to pretend to want anything else to go with it”. Meera Sodha reckons it’s “one of the world’s finest dishes”, and all you need is a little patience, and a lot of ghee.
The dal
Dal makhani requires urad, sometimes written as urid, dal and – I made this mistake so you don’t have to – not everything labelled as such is suitable. These small black beans are available whole, split (as used by chef Vivek Singh in his recipe in Spice At Home), and split and hulled – at which point they become known as white lentils, which are never used for black dal. Perhaps that seems obvious to you, especially if you’re lucky enough to have grown up on the stuff, but staring at endless bags of beans in Drummond Street behind London’s Euston station, it wasn’t to me, so I offer up my own stupidity as a cautionary tale. Go for the things that look like tiny grey pebbles in the bag.
Krishna Dutta’s gloriously comprehensive Dal Cookbook includes a recipe for a Kashmiri-style dal makhani, contributed by an 80-year-old she describes as a “pious Hindu”, which uses five different types of dal – urad, channa, masoor, waxy toor and moong – as an “auspicious combination”. The texture is far more varied than those using a single type, but delicious as it is, with urad dal as just one sixth of the total. It’s not terribly black or, indeed, creamy, which, auspicious or not, seems a shame.
Both Gowardhan and Romy Gill, whose gloriously rich dal makhani made a big impression on me when I visited her Thornbury restaurant last year, use a mixture of urad dal and kidney beans, Gowardhan explaining that “urad dal is a lentil that thrives on slow cooking; the longer it cooks, the richer the dal makhani is”. One Delhi restaurant famously simmers it for days on end, but without the luxury of time, “the addition of a small quantity or rajma or kidney beans will give the makhani gravy its rich texture, and also a little bit of colour”.
They do indeed lend the finished dish a better colour, but neither my testers nor I think they add much else, so I’m going to leave them out. However, if you do happen to have some dried kidney beans lying around in need of using up (dried beans and pulses are best used within six months of purchase, according to Dutta; the older they are the longer they will take to soften), by all means use them in place of some of the urad dal.
I do like Gowardhan’s suggestion of roughly mashing the cooked dal; in the absence of 40-odd hours to tend the dish, this is a useful shortcut for thickening the gravy.
The spices
While Dutta, Gill, Sodha and Gowardhan cook their pulses separately, Singh and Will Bowlby, head chef at London’s Kricket, simmer them with onions, chillies and spices. I find this makes them difficult to skim, and gives the onion a rather slimy consistency, but the subtle, smoky sweetness that Anjali Pathak’s black cardamom and cinnamon gives the beans in her book Secrets from My Indian Family Kitchen, does appeal. If you don’t happen to have them, though, don’t worry – they’re by no means essential.
This isn’t a dish that demands hundreds of different spices – indeed, Sodha uses just chilli powder – but warming garam masala, as used by Gill, Gowardhan and Dutta, works well with the richness of the cream, along with cumin for earthiness and coriander for zestiness – both popular ingredients in the recipes I try.
The secret ingredient in Gill’s dal, which proves the runaway winner among my testers, is methi, or fenugreek leaves, which she tells me is a typical Punjabi ingredient. They add a haunting, smoky, almost musty flavour that takes me right back to India. Do try to find them, if you can; Asian supermarkets will carry them, and they’re commonly stocked in the speciality ingredients or world food aisles of large supermarkets.
The aromatics
Dutta’s recipe is unique in containing no onion or garlic, which are off limits to devout Hindus (hence the asafoetida, which is often used to impart a compensatory, savoury note in their place). Everyone else adds large amounts of the latter, along with ginger, and Gowardhan, Singh, Sodha, Bowlby and Pathak also start their dals with golden, slow-cooked onions, which gives them an answering sweetness to the beans and spices. I would suggest chopping, rather than slicing them, however; the tangle of the former spoils the smoothness of the gravy for me.
Fresh chillies are also common: finely chop them if you enjoy heat; slit them and remove from the dal before serving if you’d prefer a milder result.
Tomatoes: yes or no?
Only Dutta leaves these out altogether; the rest of the recipes are divided fairly evenly between fresh fruit and puree – we all prefer the latter, and not just because decent fresh tomatoes are so hard to come by in the UK for most of the year. The rich, deep, cooked flavour of the puree just works better with the earthy lentils and cream.
The dairy
“The reason I say this dish is for special occasions,” Gowardhan writes, “is the copious quantities of butter and cream. No recipe should skimp on it, and nor will mine!” Wise words: for my greedy crowd, Dutta’s yoghurt just won’t cut it. Sodha, interestingly, uses whole milk, simmering it down to sticky sweetness, and copious amounts of butter, but perhaps unsurprisingly, the double whammy of double cream and butter or ghee favoured by Bowlby, Singh and Gill proves the most popular. You can reduce the latter, if you like, but it seems a shame – there are thousands of great recipes for everyday dals out there (indeed, Dutta’s book is stuffed full of them), but this isn’t one of them.
Perfect dal makhani
Prep 15 min, plus soaking time
Cook 50 min
Serves 4-6 as a main or side
200g urad dal, whole and unhulled
1 cinnamon stick (optional)
2 black cardamom pods (optional)
5 tbsp ghee or butter
2 large onions, peeled and finely chopped
20g piece fresh ginger, peeled and grated
5 garlic cloves, peeled and crushed
2 green chillies, slit (or finely chopped, if you’d like your dal hotter)
1 tsp garam masala
1 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp ground coriander
½ tsp Kashmiri red chilli powder
75g tomato puree
150ml double cream
2 tbsp dried fenugreek leaves
Fresh coriander (optional)
Soak the dal overnight, then rinse well and drain. Cover with three times as much cold water and bring to a boil. Skim, then add the cinnamon stick and cardamom pods, if using. Simmer until the beans are soft enough to crush easily against the side of the pan, topping up the water if necessary, because they should always be covered (this will probably take 45 minutes to an hour).
Meanwhile, melt four tablespoons of ghee in a large frying pan over a medium heat, then gently sweat the onions until soft and golden.
Stir in the ginger, garlic and green chillies, cook for another minute or so, then stir in all the dried spices apart from the fenugreek leaves, and cook, stirring, for a few minutes more.
Turn down the heat and stir in first the tomato puree and then, gradually, the cream and fenugreek. Turn off the heat.
When the dal is ready, drain it over a bowl, retaining the water, then roughly mash so some of the dal is squashed and some remains whole. Stir all the dal into the pan with the sauce, then, over a low heat, add just enough of the cooking water to bring it to your desired consistency – I like mine quite thick, rather than soupy.
Season to taste and serve with a scattering of fresh coriander, if you like the stuff.
• Dal makhani: a heart attack in healthfood’s clothing, or the most delicious thing you can do with lentils? How do you make yours, and whose is the best version you’ve ever had?
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