Did you buy a batch of hard toor dal | tur | tuvar | pigeon peas| that does not cook properly? Does that frustrate you and waste your time? Here are some ideas to overcome this problem….
Typically, most South Indians, cook white rice and toor dal together in the pressure cooker. This cooking duo is usually a time saver, but a problem when the toor dal is hard and rather tough to cook.You cannot afford to overcook this combo, otherwise you end up with mushy rice. If you undercook it, you get to make the often-joked about 2 layer sambar – dig from the bottom for sambar, take from the top for rasam.
So, how do you overcome this problem? – I propose 2 easy solutions.
Solution 1: Par cook the toor dal before you load the dal
Bring toor dal and water in saucepan to boil and cover with a lid for 10 minutes
Measure out the toor dal you want. Add 1:2 water. Let it come to boil in a small saucepan. Switch off the flame and close the lid for 10 minutes. This now results in half-cooked dal.
Take this par-cooked dal and proceed as normal with the pressure cooker. Place rice at the bottom and this half-boiled toor dal on the top. Close the cooker and let it cook.
Look at that!! You get smooth, well-mashed toor dal…
Solution 2 – Grind the toor dal in a blender
Ok, say you have no time or no stove available to par cook the dal as listed in solution 1. You just put the rice and daal in the cooker, pray that it should cook well. You open the cooker and see the lentils sitting individually. Gaahhhh!!!
Rather than taking the rice out, pressure cooking it for another 2 whistles, waiting for it to cool down and then adding it to the sambar (Whew…. your hair will turn grey from all this waiting)….Just BLEND it.
Once you blend the dal, adding it to the sambar and letting it come to a boil will complete the cooking more rapidly than placing it back in the pressure cooker.
P.S. – Use any blender – hand blender, your counter spice blender anything will do the job.
These are not rocket-science ideas. But often, in the busy-mad rush of our daily lives, it is good to remind ourselves of easy alternatives. The busy family-feeding mom or dad could always use a time-saving tip or two.
Do you have any other ideas? Feel free to chime below. As always, I look forward to hearing from you.
*Other excellent ideas from a reader has been –
1) Try soaking toor dal in hot water and
2) Place dal in the bottom of cooker and rice on top.
You can try these out as well.*
Yeah, you can add oil mix well in the cooker vessel. It will cook well.
Greetings! You said to Let it come to boil in a small saucepan and close the lid for 10 minutes. This now results in half-cooked dal. Won’t the dal boil over when the sauce pan is covered? Do you reduce the flame or stove to the lowest setting first (after it comes to a boil)?
Hi!!…Yes, the dal will boil over if the stove was on. What I meant was – switch off the flame, close the lid and let it steep in the hot/steam environment for 10 minutes.
Thanks for the question and I will edit the page to explain it better from my end.
Hi
Ok, I’m really fed up with cooking Dhaal and it being hard. Even after following your instructions. Please can I ask which is the best dhaal I can buy which will be easier to cook. Make etc and I’ll go and buy it! Many thanks.
Hi Nabila, sorry to hear that…I understand the frustrations of that. We buy our dhal from Costco, which offers the Khazana brand of dhal.
I also found Mantra 24 products very good quality.
Another problem could be the pressure leakage in the regular cooker. The instant pot does a really good job of cooking the dhal well… and since the instant pot cooking is set up by time, you can set toor dhal for 12 minutes or more and it makes the dhal very well mashed.
Hope that helps. Please don’t give up, usually a few corrections here and there and you will be on your way to cooking dhal effortlessly.
Thanks so much for that…I will retry and will update you. On a second note I don’t use a pressure cooker it’s an iron wok pot. So it’s open lid and I stand at the stove! Cooking placing a lid on for steam. Never used a pressure cooker. 😊
I would encourage you to get a pressure cooker. Open pan cooking for tougher lentils like toor dal and Chana dal can frustrate you due to the enormous time needed to cook it down.
In fact there are some urad dal recipes that needs hours! on open stove to get creamy consistency.
As you may have guessed, Steam is better at cooking than boiling water. However cooking with closed lid can be difficult due to the foam trying to push up on the lid….hence the preference by many Indians for pressure cooker.
Good luck, please don’t give up and happy cooking.
Hello. Thank you for your post. It is good to know I’m not crazy in thinking my dal should be done and isn’t. I’ve been cooking typical western beans for many years (pinto, red, mayocoba, lentils), and make regularly chole & rajma, but just bought my first bag of toor dal, and my first outing was a bit frustrating. Usually I buy beans from a place with good turnover, the thinking being fresher beans won’t stall and take forever to finish. Nothing worse than investing the time after buying beans from some stagnant bulk bin and having to throw it all out because they will not finish, or seeing a bulk bin with mixed batches. I rant. In this case I was trying to cook on the stove in a non-pressurized vessel without rice, so timing isn’t important. In your experience is it old beans or just variation in the crop that makes some hard to cook? I may be wrong in thinking old beans don’t cook. Anyway, in case you haven’t tried them, my favoritest bean is baby lima cooked very gently so they don’t disintegrate, although some will split, drained and dressed as a salad. The silky texture is a true delight.
Hi Clayton, I think you are right. The older the bean, the harder it is to cook. That’s been my experience as well. I have to look up the science (it might have something to do with the drop in inherent moisture levels).
However, yes there are some variations in crop varieties too. Many Indians stick to only their favorite brand, because there is no need to experiment with cooking timings once they figured it out and get comfortable with it.
Toor dal, especially is tricky, since it works beautifully in stews where it is well integrated into the sambar or the Gujarati dal. This requires it to be cooked until it literally falls apart. So, don’t be too hard on yourself regarding toor. It is a hard one to master, even for us Indians.
I’ll look up baby Lima… sounds delicious!!
Hi, I recently cooked toor dal for sambar in the instant pot and it resulted in dal that had a bite. I soaked the dal for 2+ hours on the countertop, followed by a whopping 18 mins in the instant pot. That still didn’t make it mashed. So I par blended it in a vitamix and continued to cook in the instant pot for another hour or so?! and it still had a bite. Needless to say I was very embarrassed to serve it to the company I was hosting. I am an instant pot beginner – what am i doing wrong? 18 mins sounds like it should be plenty for toor dal post soaking. the little metal part in the lid that holds the silicone ring is coming loose for me, so I am wondering if that is the issue? Thanks for your help!
Hi JJ,
Hmm…, It is odd that toor dal did not cook well even after all your efforts.
Hopefully, you set the valve to seal and not vent position. Otherwise, it will not build pressure. Or maybe like you said, there may be a leak that prevented pressure build up as well.
I would recommend blending the toor dal after cooking and let the purée come to a boil on stovetop in case your instant pot is just not doing the trick. Also, make sure you don’t cook your dal with any acid (esp tamarind), since acid does not allow dals to get mushy. Mix tamarind and toor dal only if you are completely satisfied with the mushiness of the dal.
As a corollary, you can use baking soda to raise the ph and breakdown the dal quicker, if you are up for it.