Dal makhani

Before you start

• soak the urad and the kidney beans overnight
• four hours at a bare simmer, nearly all of it alone
• a heavy pot with a lid

Ingredients

Serves 4 · dimmer marks are storecupboard

• 180gurad dal — whole black urad, not the split white
• 40gdried kidney beans
• 160gbasmati rice
• 50gbutter
• 60mlcream
• 3tomatoes
• 2 thumbsginger and garlic
• 2 tspkashmiri chilli and garam masala
• 1 tspcumin seeds

Method

8 steps

1. soak · 8 hours walk away

   Urad and kidney beans together under plenty of cold water, overnight.

2. boil · 12m

   Drained, covered with fresh water, and boiled HARD for a full ten minutes before the heat comes down. That is for the kidney beans: undercooked they are genuinely toxic, and a long slow simmer that never reaches a rolling boil does not deal with it.

3. simmer · 1h 30m walk away

   Heat down, lid on, until the urad is soft enough to smear against the side of the pot with a spoon.

4. fry · 15m

   Cumin in half the butter, then ginger-garlic and chilli, then the tomatoes cooked right down to a dark paste.

5. simmer · 3 hours walk away

   That stirred into the dal, and then the lowest heat the hob will hold for as long as you can give it, stirred every twenty minutes. Three hours is where it stops being lentils in gravy and turns into one glossy thing, and nothing else does that — not a blender, and not more cream.

6. boil · 15m walk away

   Rice on at the end: rinsed, twice its volume of water, lid, lowest heat.

7. fold · 4m

   The rest of the butter and most of the cream in off the heat.

8. finish · 4m

   Salt, garam masala, a last swirl of cream. Anything kept should be cooled quickly and refrigerated inside the hour, rice included; it reheats better than almost anything.