Garam Masala Tuesdays: Slow Cooker Dal Makhani

I know I have posted about Dal Makhani once before on GMT. And while this is more or less the same recipe, it is one that I make in the slow cooker now so I thought a repost of it was necessary. Plus, there are some changes (albeit slight) to the recipe, so thought would just post the revised recipe.

In the  previous post I did give a brief introduction to Dal Makhani, but I found this article by a renowned Indian food critic, Vir Sanghvi, which dwells into the origins of Dal Makhani and as Vir Sanghvi’s research points out, the credit to the origins of dal makhani that we eat today can be attributed to Kundan Lal Gujra’s now famous hotel Moti Mahal in Daryaganj area of Delhi.

Another famous version of this dal is the five star hotel ITC’s Dal Bukhara. The Bukhara dal, according to the article, gets its thickness and creaminess from slow cooking. The chefs cook it on a low flame overnight and then, never take it off the fire. My father had told me about this earlier, so I thought of trying to cook it in my faithful crockpot and try to achieve restaurant style dal makhani and I am pretty pleased with the version I ma sharing with you all today.

The previous recipe of dal makhani I posted was a much more quick way of cooking the dal, but once I started cooking it in the slow cooker I have realized that without adding cream you can still achieve the creaminess and thickness of traditional dal makhani by just slow cooking it. Of course, adding cream and butter takes it another level of scrumptious goodness (Kundan Lal’s recipe has one kg of dal, 500 ml of cream and a full kg of butter!), but believe me, for the calorie conscious slow cooking the dal gives it the right amount of viscosity (and that rich taste) without the added fat.

In the pictures above I served the dal with V’s favorite baingan ka bharta and homemade naans. I will soon do a post on how to make naans (I have done a post before as well, but I prefer the new way I make them and would like to share that with you soon), so keep a look out for that.

Also, since it can be confusing for people to identify the different indian lentils used for making indian dals, I suggest having a look at this post I did which describes five different lentils with the pictures and has a pictorial reference of the whole urad and channa dals we use for this recipe.

Although the dal takes a long time to cook, it is mostly inactive time and its one of the easiest things one can make, since seriously its all about throwing everything in the crockpot and letting it do its magic. If you do want a quicker version you can still refer to the previous recipe, but do give this version a try as well.

UPDATE: As pointed by Andrew of Raw Green Madman in the comments below, it is important to boil the red kidney beans in water for ten minutes before dumping it in the slow cooker, so as to avoid red kidney bean poisoning. A more detailed explanation can be found here.