Dal Tadka – Smokey and spicy like restaurants

Dal tadka is a popular lentil dish that most Indians make at home as well as order in restaurants. This dal tadka brings restaurant style flavours to your home. Made with toor(or tuvar) dal, mung dal and chana dal, so it is creamy and has texture variations to keep you excited. Make this for your family favourite for weeknight dinners or make ahead for easy meal prep.

What is Dal Tadka?

Daal/Dal is a common lentil dish from India that is a staple in most North Indian household. It’s usually made with very simple ingredients: lentils, onion, garlic, ginger, tomatoes and a few spices. Tadka is the tempering that your pour over the dal, once its made, sort of like a finishing magic touch that takes the flavour to the next level. You don’t want to skip it!

How to make Dal tadka?

Ingredients:

Dal/Lentils:

You can use WHATEVER lentils you have on hand. I used Toor dal (split pigeon pea), mung dal (split mung beans) and chana dal (split Bengal gram). But, you can use Masoor dal (split red lentils) as well and remove or keep any kind of dal you have at hand.

Aromatics:

I use red onions, fresh ginger and garlic and green chilli peppers. Of course, you can remove the chilli peppers if thats too hot for you (or hey, challenge yourself to up your heat tolerance 😉 ). You can also sub the fresh ginger and garlic for a store-bought ginger and garlic paste (easily found in Indian stores).

Tomatoes:

I like to use tomato puree because they feel more flavourful, especially during winters or you live in countries that offer only mediocre tomato varieties. You can easily use chopped tomatoes.

Spices:

Whole spices- Whole cumin seeds, Ground spices- Turmeric powder, red chilli powder and coriander powder are easily the 3 ground spices make the base of more north Indian dishes. Also, add Garam Masala at the end (since it is a pre-toasted spice blend. It doesn’t require cooking.)

Tempering:

The tempering is the magic touch at the end that takes your dal from mediocre to extremely good! So, you can add whatever you want to add that punch factor to your dal. I used whole cumin seeds, hing (asafoetida), dried red chilli peppers. You can also add sliced garlic, ginger julienned, crushed Kasuri methi, more red chilli powder for extra heat etc.

Smoking/Dhungar Method:

The charcoal method gives a smokey restaurant-style taste to the dal. But, if you don’t have charcoal or means to heat up a charcoal piece, just add smoked paprika to the dal or skip this step.

Do try this recipe out and let me know how you like it. If you have any queries, I’m here to help you out in the comments or or DM me my Instagram page.

If you don’t have the energy to make an elaborate dal recipe, check out this one pot dal recipe. Check out other hearty Indian dishes from the blog:

• Easy Chana Masala
• Vegan Paneer Butter Masala
• Vegan Palak Paneer