Lots of recipes ask you to soak chana dal before cooking. Some recipes ask you to slightly roast them before cooking. Some say – just cook them. Is there any difference, you wonder?
If you are an experienced cook, you already might have an intuitive feel for how it would turn out. You may also expect some textural differences to each method. But, it is always best to know for sure. Let’s find out exactly what happens by running an experiment, shall we?
Same Chana Dal, 3 different cooking ways:
I cooked all 3 versions on the Instant Pot for the same amount of time (10 minutes manual pressure, 10 minutes release). This would be the equivalent of cooking it in a regular pressure cooker for 2-3 whistles and removing the whistle after switching off the stove after 10 minutes.
The 3 ways:
- Pressure cook only
- Roast (in oil) and then Pressure cook
- Soak (1 hour) and then Pressure cook
Each version involved 1 cup of chana dal and 2 cups of water. All the chana dals came from the same packet and the experiment was run on the same day. So, hopefully, I have reduced/eliminated almost all variations (to an extent – you see, I am not running NIH, this will do for now :)). Now, you can see the outcome of these 3 different cooking techniques side by side.
Results
Version 1: Pressure Cook for 10 minutes
This version involved straight-up cooking (no soaking, no roasting prior). Just added 1 cup Chana dal, 2 cups water, set the Instant Pot to Pressure cook mode – 10 minutes and walk away.
Add dal, water to Instant Pot 
Set for 10 minutes
After about 10 minutes, I released the remaining small amount of steam and opened the lid. Here’s how it looked:
Notice the slight foaming around the center and the edges. I then took 2-3 lentils and crushed it in my hand. The resulting texture was soft on the outside, but slightly hard and chalky towards the center of the lentil.
It just needed another few minutes of pressure cooking to get fully mushy.
This almost-cooked stage is actually perfect for sweet desserts like Poornam Boorelu or Puran Poli. You puree it and cook it with jaggery + coconut to get a ball-like stuffing. Too mushy and it will not work for these recipes.
Want savory daal only?…No problem. Just cook it further. At this point, you could add onion-tomato tadka (Indian seasoning) and pressure cook it for another 2 minutes in the Instant Pot (or 1 whistle in a manual cooker) for a soft, flavorful North-Indian style Chana dal. I made lauki chana dal with this batch the next day, came perfectly fine.
Version 2: Roast the Chana Dal for ~5 minutes + Cook for 10 minutes
In this version, I first set the Instant Pot to Saute Mode. I roasted the Chana Dal with 2 tbsp oil for 4.5 minutes. Why 4.5 minutes? That’s how long it took for a lovely, nutty aroma and for the chana dal to change to a slightly reddish color. Once the dal was nice and roasted, I added 2 cups water and set the Instant Pot to Pressure cook mode – 10 minutes.
Roast Dal 
Pressure cook after roasting
After about 10 minutes, I released the remaining small amount of steam and opened the lid. Here’s how it looked:
The foaming was the least of the 3 methods (was it because of the oil? – that’s for another experiment :)). I then took 2-3 lentils and crushed it in my hand. The resulting texture was hard and brittle-like.
You would think – all that cooking 5 minutes roasting + 10 minutes cooking would really soften up the chana dal. But, it was the opposite: the 5 minutes of roasting hardened the chana dal.
Even after pureeing this dal, it continues to retain its brittle state. The roasting step seems to prevent the chana dal from ever getting mushy no matter how long you cook it. Nothing wrong with it…This yields a vastly different texture, just don’t expect the homogeneous, soft taste you get when you make typical daal.
Additional Notes – Take a look at 2 different styles of making the same chana dal payasam (kheer) recipe by different bloggers. Blogger 1 (Blendwithspices.com ) makes it by roasting the chana dal and then cooks it vs Blogger 2 (Sailaja’skitchen.com) makes it by pressure cooking straightaway. While they both look delicious, hopefully, the pictures will reveal the processing story. You will notice the first recipe will have the dal that stands separate-separate (kollu-kollu, we say in tamil) vs the second recipe has a more integrated, soft texture.
Version 3: Soak for 1 hour + Cook for 10 minutes
I soaked the chana dal for exactly 1 hour in 2 cups of water.
One interesting point – At the end of 1 hour, the 1 cup chana dal had absorbed some of the water and plumped up to become 1 + 1/3 cup of chana dal.
I added the entire soaked chana dal along with the soaking liquid (that maybe was a mistake, you will see why soon), set the Instant Pot to Pressure cook mode – 10 minutes.
After cooking and about 10 minutes of natural release, I opened the lid. Here’s how it looked:
My little one was there when I opened the lid. She looked at it puzzled and said, “Mom, why is it so soapy?” Hahaha…Notice the excessive foaming. I should have thrown away the soaking liquid which would have been filled with oligosaccharides, but I didn’t want to mess with the measurements. Well, science > fear of gas…(that too, for us lentil chomping Indians)!!!
I then took a lentil and crushed it in my hand. So, so soft…The resulting texture was a soft, mushy, well-cooked lentil.
How I used it – I scooped off as much foam as possible. The next day, I pureed this chana dal with additional water; simmered it with a few South Indian spices to make a flavorful Senega Kattu (An Andhra soupy stew). Yum!!
Conclusion
Here is the conclusion. At 10 minutes pressure cooking Chana Dal in the Instant Pot
- Plain Cooking: Yields almost-done lentils
- Roast + Cook: Yields hard/brittle lentils
- Soak + Cook: Yields the softest and fully cooked lentils
Seeing these results should hopefully help you understand the ingredient – Chana Dal / Bengal Gram/ Kadalai paruppu / Senega Pappu better. Chana dal is a super healthy food!! Having knowledge about how it behaves will increase your confidence in the kitchen to tackle Chana Dal with ease, no matter what the recipe is.
I hope you found this experiment useful. Please post your thoughts and comments below. I look forward to reading them.
I’ve often wondered how I could make chana dal softer in texture, so your blog post was very helpful for me – thank you!!
Yay!! So glad to hear that!!
Thanks I pretty much got what you said but have a question. Are the protein or vitamins affected by how you cook the daals.
Hi Hasumati, unlike fresh vegetables which are a source of Vitamin C, which is heat sensitive; daals, in my opinion, are mainly used as a source of minerals (calcium, iron) which are often unaffected by heat.
Regarding protein – The way we denature the protein (make the amino acids inside accessible) may differ with the heating technique. Sprouting, soaking and pressure cooking will give you easily digestible proteins.while roasting and frying (while giving you incredible flavors – think vada, falafels) may not be as easily digestible. Hope that helps.
Thanks Swetha I appreciate your answer
Very interesting. Thanks. One thing… soaking breaks the hard covering and helps protein content plus absorption to rise.. It is always good. However the soaked water should not be thrown, it has water soluble vitamins and carries some proteins.
Hi Shubha,
Thank you for posting your comment. I definitely agree with the first part of your comment regarding the soaking.
However, in my opinion, it is very unlikely that – with just soaking alone, the protein denaturation occurs to the point that there will be dissolved protein particles in the soaked water.
Regarding vitamins, yes there may be some Vit B lost, but you should be able to get that from grains or other food sources easily. Point being…yes, it could carry some vitamins; but you could also throw away the soaking water if you felt that the soaking water could give you gas and would upset your tummy. Either way is not going to have a major significant difference.
Hi Swetha, thanks for the comparison!
Sometimes I see chefs making masala dosa, where they ask for roasted chana dal. They fry the roasted chana dal in oil, adding spices, potatoes and so on. Later they put it on the dosa, ready to serve. Isn’t it to expect hard as a stone? When I do this, the chana dal is still undercooked. What is the misunderstanding here? Here in Europe you often get only chana dal, but no “roasted chana dal”.
regards, lester
Hi Lester,
It is a good observation, however in this case the chef is right. The reason why they fry the chana dal in oil is to provide textural contrast and crunch to the potatoes. In this case, the chana dal is used like a ‘spice’ and not a protein base. You will notice these recipes only ask for 1 or 2 tbsp of chana dal, no higher.
To prevent the undercooking, you can soak the chana dal for a couple of hours in water and drain it and then proceed. Or add it first to the oil and fry it thoroughly before adding other components like mustard seed, curry leaves, etc.
Roasted chana dal is also called daliya or roasted gram. You can see a picture of this ingredient here: https://www.upgrademyfood.com/vegan-protein-ball-roasted-chickpeas/
The way they manufacture this is by roasting the chana dal in high temperature (more than 500F) in sand or a kiln to get that roasting effect, which is hard to do at home. Hope that helps.
Hi Swetha, thanks for the great explanation! 🤗
Does the industrial roasting process affect the hardness of the Chana? When you bite on it, does it feel more like a peanut in the mouth?
Thanks for the idea to soak the Chana dal. This is what I usually do: soaking and boiling in the pressure cooker.
Regards, lester
Hi Lester, the industrial roasting makes it – hmmm…how do I describe it? – like brittle, powdery and chalky. It is kind of like puffed rice, but more dense.
It has no inherent taste, which makes it an excellent neutral flavor base for both savory and sweet recipes.
Thanks for all of the chana info, Swetha! This is definitely my most used dal, mainly because I make countless salads with it in the summer, and I’m looking for that al dente texture that’s hard to get in other dal. Your experience with the roasted chana is pretty much what I discovered, with it hard in the center, but not really what I wanted. However, what I usually do is use the slow cook mode in the Instant Pot! This is almost like soaking it, in a way, so the center eventually gets softer, but slower, and still slightly crunchy. I just have to start sampling it every ten minutes, starting at the right times – after about 100 minutes, for raw chana, and about 140 minutes, for roasted. Most people are looking for faster in the IP, using pressure cooking mode, but I do this when looking to get it just right, but not overcooked. When adding whole grains to these, I add those with about the right amount of time left, usually 30 or 40 minutes after starting, depending on the grain. This helps with whole grains, too, and you don’t get the “exploding” grains that often happens, even using the low pressure setting. Takes some practice, but it works great!
I still use the pressure cooker IP for when I want any soft dal – nothing like it for that!
Dave
This is brilliant Dave!! I never thought of this method. I am totally going to try that and report back when I do.
Thanks for the clever tips and the detailed explanation. Cheers!!
Ty so much for this experiment……specialllly for mentioning that the no soak method was good for puran poli. That is exactly what I needed. God bless…..
Glad to hear it!!
Hi All, great reviews. And a special thanks to Swetha for doing these experiments!! I was always wondering what would be the differences. And found your experiments and I wanted to thank you so much for sharing them with us.
Now, as per what I have learned so far from western science, Ayurveda, our ancestors (i mean our grandparents) and watching lots of videos from other chefs and some ayurvedic vaidyas…….. here is my conclusion that I would like to share with you all. I am 100% believing in this but it could be different for you guys as everyone has a different experience of food in their own life. So please disagree if it does not make sense to you and please reply so I can have more knowledge to chew on :-)). Please read below what I have learned from all the above.
So why soaking, and/or roasting?
As per Dr. Mercola, soaking any grains, lentils, or any kind of seeds will break the phytates or phytic acid. This is the inbuilt mechanism of the seeds to prevent them from nature eating them. I mean phytates are their own self-defence mechanism. By soaking it, this mechanism is now broken and it is safe to eat. Or you can say it is less harmful. I mean we not going to be killed but small problems of not digesting very well. i.e. gas, bloating, etc… So by soaking you break the phytates or phytic acids and not it is easy to digest. And very important is how long to soak. Per Dr. Mercola, you need to soak at least for 12 hours. So overnight soaking is the best. And this is what our grandparents did.
Second thing, why roasting? Okay, here is what I have learned as per one of my Ayurvedic gurus, that the roasting will add more Agni (fire) to those seeds. Most of the beans are vayu (air) increasing in the body because they are soma prakruti (cold). So adding Agni to them before cooking will make them easy to digest. And of course, adding Agni (i mean roasting) certainly will break down the phytic acid or maybe change its chemical structure so that it will be easily digestible.
So in my opinion, lentils, and beans should be roasted then soaked overnight then cook!
Hope this helps… And Swetha, thank you again for your experiments.
Thank you Hetla for your insights!!
Can u plz explain the nutritional values when we pressure cook a dal or grain in comparison to the cooking in open vessel (no pressure cooker)…
Hi Anuj,
This question needs a detailed response, I am not sure how much I know about it. But, to my limited knowledge, I can answer:
1. Because the pressure cooker operates at higher temp – 120C rather than 100C, it increases the GI of the dish because it causes the starch to disintegrate and leak from the grain compared to the open vessel. However 2. In an open vessel if you drain out the water, you may lose certain B vitamins that are water soluble.
When you compare 1 and 2, given Indian’s proclivity to diabetes and the abundance of BVitamins in other foods, open cooking may be the better choice. But the convenience of the cooker is overwhelming too.
Hope that makes sense.