Mamta's Kitchen - A Family Cookbook





Help with Butter Dal 1

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On 14/07/2006 06:07pm, Lori wrote:

I made this recipe exactly as written except that I cooked the dal for 6 hours in a slow cooker. It was tender and soft but not mushy or falling apart. I used the minimum water called for, but there was a great deal of water remaining after cooking.

The recipe does not say whether to retain the water or drain it away. I chose to drain most of it and this may be why my dal turned out to have a poor finished texture. When I have dal in restaurants is is smooth and runny with a lot of gravy-like sauce.

My dal was a pot full of tarka and beans. No sauce. The beans were sitting there and the tarka was obvious bits and shreds of onion and tomato. Even adding the cream did not turn the dal into a gravy. I took a hand-held blender to it before adding the cream but I left about a third of the dal whole. This helped the appearance and made it resemble your photo, but it did not help the eating texture which was thick and, well, beany. It was fragrant and delicious otherwise. What did I do wrong?

On 14/07/2006 09:07pm, Mamta wrote:

Hello Lori

I have never made it in a slow cooker, so not sure how long you will take. My sister in-law used to make it in slow cooker. She used to switch it on in the morning, for eating it at dinner time.

Amount of water will be different in a slow cooker, and perhaps more than in pressure cooker, because it cooks over a longer period. You will have to start with less water and add boiling hot water later on, if necessary.

If it was not mushy and water was separate from the dal, the dal was not cooked enough. When done, the dal should become soft and mushy. This is what makes the liquid thick. There should not be any separate water left to drain away. It should be like a thick gravy, with soft dal in it, and no dal bits sitting separately. Hand blender might have given you a thick gravy and improved the end result, but your basic problem of undercooked dal remained, giving you a ?beany? result. So, cook it for longer next time. If you soak this dal overnight or at least for 5-6 hours, it reduces the cooking time. I have amended the recipe to say this.

Talking about dals reminded me, never cook kidney beans in slow cooker, I hope your cooker book says this.

Mamta

On 17/07/2006 09:07pm, Lori wrote:

Why not cook kidney beans in a slow cooker?

On 18/07/2006 07:07am, Christine wrote:

Red kidney beans, if not cooked properly, can cause toxicity; nausea, vomiting, abdominal pain and even diarrhoea. This is due to a toxin which is destroyed only by cooking at high temperature for a minimum of 15 minutes. The temperature in crockpot/slowcooker is never high enough to do this. Pressure cooker does this very effectively. If you do not have a pressure cooker and must use a slow cooker, boil them briskly for 15 minutes in a pan, before adding to the slow cooker. When ready, they should be soft and easily squashed by pressing with your fingers.

You should soak them for 6-8 hours before cooking and the water they were soaked in should be thrown away. You should never sprout kidney beans.

Similar rule applies to Soya beans for cooking.

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