India: vegan dal makhani

Our vegan world tour has finally arrived in India, where we make one of my all time favourite dishes: a rich, creamy, vegan dal makhani. Cooked for hours, rested over night and full of flavourful spices, this dish is sure to delight. Read on to learn more about Indian food or jump right to the recipe.

Finally in India

I have long been dreading writing about India on this vegan world tour for several reasons. Indian food is hands-down my favourite cuisine and I have several friends from the country. India is truly massive with a huge, diverse population, covering a very large area and a lot of different sub-climates, resulting in a wide variety of ingredients and regional cuisines. This combination of an extra difficult post combined with a higher-than-normal desire to write something well has made me put India off for quite a while. What finally give me the push to add a stop in India on this virtual tour of the world’s cuisines was visiting India in person. Earlier this year, my wife and I had the great fortune of visiting two of our Vancouver-based friends’ wedding in northern India. An amazing experience in itself and a great opportunity to finally try some of my favourite food in its native country. When is there a better time for me to write a few paragraphs about Indian food than now?

Indian cuisine

When a country is as large, as populated and as diverse, both in terms of geography and culture, as India, it follows naturally that the food is truly varied. I’m pretty sure most people have been to an Indian restaurant at some point in their life. I’m equally certain that many people also have their own Indian go-to order, be it aloo ghobi (potato and cauliflower curry), dal tadka (chana dal with fried spices), tandoori skewers (clay oven roasted skewers), fluffy nan (flat bread), chana masala (chickpea curry), or samosas (fried stuffed dough pockets). (Side bar: did you know the samosa is likely originally from Iran? Check out the previous post about Tajikistan’s sambusa to learn more.)

Why so many North Indian restaurants?

One thing that stands out to me is that most Indian restaurants by default serve North Indian food. Step into an Indian restaurant anywhere in the world (outside of South Asia) and the menu will likely look familiar. While the menu is very broad, it will likely feature a very similar range of delicious vegetable curries, the same amazing dals (legume based soups/stews) and a similar assortment of roasted dishes, spiced rice and deep fried appetizers. This has always intrigued me and I’ve been trying to find out why.

I haven’t dug deep enough so take this with a pinch of salt but from what I’ve managed to find, it seems to have many contributing factors. Primary that North Indian food was among the first Indian cuisines that entered the international restaurant scene and then became what customers expected and hence what future chefs decided to serve, to meet expectations and stay in business.

Many of the early modern emigration from India was from Northern India, and in particular Punjab. When these emigrants opened restaurants abroad, the food they served was often north Indian. The British colonial rulers often lived in Delhi and got used to the regional food. When they returned to Britain, this is the food they associated with India and craved back home as well. So quite early on, it seems North Indian food became what customers expected when they went to an Indian restaurant. Which shaped what Indian restaurants served and in turn became what the next generation of customers came to expect, and so on in a self-reinforcing loop.

Other Indian cuisines

I love North Indian food. We cook it often at home and it is probably the type of restaurant we visit the most. But the wild success of North Indian restaurants can sometimes overshadow the other regional cuisines India to offer; India has so much more than North Indian food. Take South Indian food for instance. Here spices include curry leaves, toasted legumes, dried red chilies and mustard seeds. Curries often include coconut and dairy is not too common, making many of the dishes vegan instead of vegetarian.

Dosa, a South Indian must-try

I think the most famous South Indian dish is dosa and this is a great example of the differences between north and south. Dosa are made from a fermented rice and lentil batter. after fermenting overnight, the batter is fried on a flat frying pan (tawa) to create a crispy, crepe-like pancake. Often served for breakfast, the dosa is traditionally accompanied by dal sambar, a lentil soup spiced with curry leaves, mustard seeds, toasted lentils, and sour tamarind paste. Often the dosa is stuffed with spiced potatoes or some other vegetable, like okra or egg plant. To eat, you tear of a piece of dosa with stuffing and optionally dip in the dal sambar, or one of the accompanying chutneys, like coconut chutney or tomato chutney. A similar fermented rice-and-lentil batter can be steamed to create fluffy pillows called idli or shaped into donuts and deep-fried to create vada. Both idli and vada are served in the same manner, with dal sambar, coconut chutney and tomato chutney.

Dosa, idli, and vada are often served for breakfast and we found them at all hotel breakfasts when we visited India. Such a treat! South Indian restaurants are not that uncommon and you might be able to find one not too far from where you live or on some future trip. Search for dosa in your favourite search engine or map app.

For our virtual visit to India, I considered making dosa to give a good example of the variety of the country’s dishes. But in the end, I decided to cook a North Indian dish that is near at heart to me. This dish, dal makhani, used to be my go-to order at restaurants before I went vegan.

Dal makhani

The word dal is widely used in Indian cuisine to refer to beans and lentils as well as soup or stew-like dishes with pulses as the main ingredient. Dal makhani, sometimes spelled dal makhni, literally means butter lentils, and is a tomato-based dal with black lentils (urad dal) and one or more variety of beans, such as kidney beans, black beans, or sometimes chickpeas. Butter and heavy cream are both added to elevate the dish from a simple every-day food to a luxurious restaurant dish. An army of warm spices, such as cinnamon, cloves, and cardamom, along with garlic and ginger, give the dish a rich complexity. By adding a lot of butter and slow-cooking the dish for hours, the spices develop a rich complexity and their aromatic compounds permeate the dish.

Unlike many other restaurant dishes that are just adaptions on what people are eating at home, dal makhani was invented specifically for a restaurant (Moti Mahal, Monish Gujral, Vir Sanghvi). The three friends Kundan Lal Gujral, Kundan Lal Jaggi, and Thakur Dass arrived in Old Delhi as refugees from the Punjab province in British India after the Partition in 1947 (The Sunday Guardian). In Delhi, they opened the now world famous restaurant Moti Mahal (Pearl Palace), named after the restaurant in Peshawar where Gujral and Jaggi had been working as waiters (The Sunday Guardian). Several dishes were invented at Moti Mahal in the early days. Gujral invented the now world famous dish butter chicken to rescue tandoori chicken that was going dry. By simmering it in a rich sauce with tomato, cream and butter, butter chicken was born. Later, he went on to invent dal makhani as a vegetarian comeplement to his butter chicken. A rich and luxurious take on home-cooked Punjabi black dal dishes that typically feature neither tomato nor cream and butter.

After its invention at Moti Mahal in the 1950s, dal makhani has gotten a life of its own. It has become a standard dish in most North Indian restaurants across the world and you can find it pretty much anywhere. The main characteristics of dal makhani are black lentils served in a gravy made from tomato and butter (Dassana’s veg recipes, Vegan Richa, Aahaaram). The black lentils are accompanied by a bean, traditionally red kidney beans but black beans or chickpeas are sometimes used instead or as well. The dal is seasoned with classic garam masala spices, such as cinnamon, cardamom and cloves, along with cumin, garlic and ginger. After slow cooking for as long as possible, the dish is finished with cream and fenugreek, either as dried leaves or ground seeds.

Vegan dal makhani recipe

Dal makhani is a bit personal to me. It was one of the first recipes where my wife and I experimented for years to really capture the dish as experienced at the different Indian restaurants we visited. Back in 2012, we finally found a good recipe published by Vahchef on Youtube. My notes from those days simply say “2012-11-11, trying to cook dal makhani… again“, with a slightly defeatist tone. But the results were good enough to write down! (I don’t have many notes from the failed attempts prior to this one. I’m the worst scientist.)

The main difference between Vahchef’s version and the recipes we had tried before was fenugreek. This one spice changed the entire dish dramatically. When you try the recipe below, do yourself a huge favour and find fenugreek seeds (ground) or leaves (dried) and use them in the dish. While we started with Vahchef’s recipe, our current recipe has deviated quite a bit from the original. He used dried fenugreek leaves which we couldn’t find in those days so we replaced it with ground fenugreek seeds which worked well so we kept it. While Vahchef only simmers his dal for 40 minutes in the segment, he mentions that the restaurant version is simmered for 6 hours. So we increased the simmering to 2+ hours and added a 24 h refrigerated resting stage for the flavours to really develop without having to watch the pot for ages. We’re also using canned tomatoes and black beans instead of fresh tomatoes and dry kidney beans.

Back in 2016, we created a vegan version of our previous dairy containing dal makhani recipe. The vegan adaptation is very straight forward in this case: you simply replace the cream and butter with vegan versions, a substitution with very minor impact on the overall flavour.

Conclusion

Dal makhani is not a new dish to me and it is hands down still one of our favourite dishes. Having used largely the same recipe – now turned into vegan dal makhani – for 12+ years surely speaks to how much we enjoy this dish. Rich, creamy and full of well-developed flavours, it is a dish we often serve to guests. Since most of the work is done the day before eating the dal makhani, it is even a convenient time saver. You can focus on side dishes, maybe cook a quick vegetable curry, clean the apartment or relax with a beverage while waiting for your guests. If it sounds like I’m over-selling this vegan dal makhani, give the recipe a try but don’t forget the fenugreek.

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Vegan dal makhani recipe

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Vegan dal makhani

Course Main Course

Cuisine Indian, South Asian

Keyword beans, Dal, lentils, stew

Prep Time 10 minutes minutes

Cook Time 2 hours hours

Resting 1 day day

Servings 6 servings

Ingredients

• 250 mL split urad dal black lentils
• 1 can cooked red kidney beans or black beans
• 400 mL pureed tomatoes
• 1 tbsp canola oil
• 3 tbsp ginger & garlic paste see note
• 2 tsp turmeric
• 2 tsp ground coriander
• chili powder, to taste
• salt, to taste
• 75 g vegan margarine
• 2 tsp ground fenugreek seeds
• 50 mL vegan heavy cream see note

Whole garam masala

• 2 tsp cumin seeds
• 8 cloves
• 5 cardamom pods
• 1 stick of cinnamon, ~5 cm
• 3 bay leaves

Instructions

Day 1

• Boil the lentils in lightly salted water for about 40-60 min. They should be very soft. If you pre-soak the lentils for a few hours, you can reduce the cooking time.
• When the lentils are soft, strain them but preserve the cooking water.
• While boiling the lentils, start with the main dal.

  Add oil to a separate pot on medium to high heat. Add the cumin seeds. When they start cracking, reduce the heat and add the rest of the whole garam masala ingredients (cloves, cardamom, cinnamon and bay leaves).
• Add the garlic and ginger paste and fry for a minute. It will sputter a lot.
• Add the pureed tomatoes, turmeric, coriander, chili and salt.
• Bring to a simmer, lower the heat and let simmer for 1-2 h.
• When the dal base has simmered for 1-2 h, remove from heat.
• Add the margarine, the cooked urad dal and 500 mL of the preserved lentil cooking liquid. Add more water if you don't have enough preserved liquid. Add the cooked, drained black beans.
• Let the dal cool. Store in the fridge overnight to let the flavours develop.

Day 2

• Bring the dal back to a simmer and add the ground fenugreek (seeds or dried leaves).
• Let simmer for 30 min. The longer the better.
• Stir in the cashew cream 5-10 minutes before serving.
• Enjoy with rice and naan or roti.

Notes

Ginger and garlic paste: can be bought in many grocery stores among the shelves with South Asian groceries. Can be made at home by grating equal parts garlic and ginger.

Vegan cream: Store bought or home made. I typically blend cashew nuts with an equal amount of water (~150 mL of each to allow the blender to run). Soaking the cashews before makes for a smoother cream.