Dal is a classic plant-based Indian dish consisting of cooked, seasoned lentils. It’s delicious, good for you, and packed with protein, meaning that it’s the kind of dish we think everybody—vegans, vegetarians, and meat-eaters alike—should master. So here are some tips on how to make the perfect dal.
Cooking Liquid
Typically, you’d cook lentils in water, but many dal recipes out there call for cooking it in vegetable stock instead. In our opinion, though, water is perfectly sufficient, as dal is cooked with so many spices that they’re in no way short of flavor and require more to come from the cooking liquid. So if you don’t have vegetable stock on hand, don’t worry.
Tempering
Cooking dal involves a common Indian cooking technique that isn’t so popular in the west, called tempering your spices. Even if you’ve never done it before, we highly recommend figuring it out for your dal recipe. Tempering means cooking your spices in oil (or ghee, clarified butter), in order to release their flavors. Think of it as the same thing you do when you sautee your aromatics (onions, garlic, and ginger) at the beginning of cooking something. Tempering just means doing the same thing with your spices, too, and it’s the best way to get the ultimate flavor.
