A creamy, decadent green lentil dal makhani style curry that is simple to make at home in one pot! Serve this vegetarian delight with naan bread or rice.
When eating in an Indian restaurant, or ordering takeaway, dal is an essential side order for me. Essential. Fresh naan bread dipped in dal makhani = pure bliss.
So I set out to make a recipe for a homemade dal makhani inspired curry that would hit the spot when we craved curry but didn’t want to splash out on takeaway.
After several iterations, I think this one finally nails it.
This is not an authentic recipe, and the fact it is cooked quite quickly comes with an inevitable trade off on its depth of flavor. But I find this to be a great compromise for an inexpensive, tasty, warming meal made with supermarket essentials that I usually have to hand.
Why use green lentils for dal?
Typically, dal makhani is made with black lentils, which makes for a gorgeous visual finish. I accept that green lentils can’t compete with that!
Black lentils also hold their shape better and bring slightly more texture to the dish, whereas green lentils go quite soft and melty after cooking for a long time.
They don’t melt completely like red lentils, but the longer they cook the more uniform they’ll become.
So black lentils may be the classic choice for dal makhani, but we compromise here for convenience, with green lentils being the dominant ones available in UK supermarkets and cooking more quickly from dried. I also do love the silky finish they bring to the table, it’s sort of a halfway point between a chana dal and a black lentil dal.
If brown lentils are more available to you, I have tested this recipe with brown lentils too and they swap in just fine!
Ultimately there’s a lot to be said for recipes which do their best to recreate a restaurant favorite with the ingredients you know you will always have to hand… especially when you can have it ready within the hour.
What spices do I need?
I tried to keep the spice profile fairly mainstream here too. We use a mix of fenugreek seeds, cumin seeds, chili powder, tumeric and garam masala.
Fenugreek seeds aren’t common enough to have a guaranteed place on your shelf, but they’re widely available in supermarkets so pick some up and you might find you love cooking with them. Swap in mustard seeds if you don’t have any.
Garam masala is a sweet and fragrant spice mix blend. The exact combo of spices will depend on the one you buy. I personally find it worth investing in fresher blends than just the usual supermarket jars. I love the JustIngredients brand which I buy from Ocado.
Fresh tomatoes or canned / pureed / paste?
I’ve tried this recipe with all three, and fresh tomatoes have the edge for me. I just prefer the way they melt into the sauce and give some flavor and freshness without that concentrated tomato flavor you would get from using canned or jarred.
But if you really need this to be a pantry meal, you can absolutely swap in a few tablespoons of tomato paste or around 1 cup (140ml) of passata (pureed tomatoes). It’s not my favorite way, but it’s certainly not bad!
How to Serve your dal
I personally call this a complete meal, alongside some rice and/or naan bread, but if you’re looking to bulk this out a little, here are some ideas for what to serve alongside:
- Topped with paneer or tofu skewers
- Topped with spiced roasted vegetables
- Alongside a really green curry like sag aloo (try my slow cooker recipe!) or sag paneer (or try my kale paneer!)
Making Ahead and Storing
This is a great dish to make ahead of serving, because the longer it sits in the fridge the better it’s going to taste.
You’ll get 4 decent servings if you’re serving it as the main meal, but more if it’s a side dish or lunch portions.
Leftovers are perfect for taking into work the next day and it will freeze nicely for 3+ months.
Green Lentil Dal Makhani
Ingredients
- 1 small onion
- 6 small cloves of garlic, sliced
- 1 Tbsp ginger
- 4 chopped fresh tomatoes
- 2 tsp cumin seeds
- 1 tsp fenugreek seeds, or you can substitute mustard seeds
- ½ tsp chili powder, see notes
- 1 Tbsp garam masala
- 1 tsp turmeric
- 200 g (1 cup) dried green lentils
- 1 can of kidney beans, drained and rinsed
- 60 ml (0.25 cups) double cream / heavy cream
- 25 g (2 tbsp) salted butter
- Salt & pepper to taste
- A couple handfuls of fresh coriander, cilantro leaves to garnish.
Instructions
- In a medium-large saucepan, heat a glug of olive oil and sautee onion until soft.
- Add the garlic, ginger, cumin seeds and fenugreek seeds. Mix for another minute or so until the fragrances start to release.
- Add the tomatoes a small pat of the butter (holding the rest back to mix in at the end) and simmer for around 5 minutes, stirring frequently, until they break down and start to reduce.
- Add the chili powder, turmeric and garam masala and stir through. Add salt and pepper to taste.
- Add the kidney beans, green lentils and 2.5 cups of boiling water.
- Simmer for 30 minutes until the lentils are soft. (That’s just a minimum – you can leave it simmering longer if you like.)
- Remove from the heat. Stir in the cream and butter until melted in.
- Let set for about 5 minutes before serving.
- Scatter with coriander (cilantro) leaves after dishing it up.
I really wish there was nutritional information.
There is now! So sorry, I left it off by mistake but have just added it in at the bottom of the recipe card 🙂
I am confused. The recipe states it makes enough for 8 people but the nutritional information is for 1/4th the recipe. Is this recipe for 4 or 8 people? I would love to try it, without cream or butter, for my vegan family but I need to know if I should double the recipe.
Sorry for the confusion! As a main dish I’d say 4 servings, as a side dish I’d say 8. I will edit the post to make this clearer as soon as I get a chance. Hope you enjoy it – without cream or butter I’d definitely add a little coconut milk!
What if you are vegan?
A few tablespoons of coconut milk would be really nice! And some coconut oil and extra salt to account for the lack of butter too.
This looks delicious! I’ve just discovered my meat-loving fella really likes lentils so can’t wait to try this 🙂
Yay! Hope you both enjoy it 🙂
This is a lovely recipe. I added quite a bit of salt and a large sprinkling of sugar to balance out the spices. Delicious, thank you!
Thank you for this recipe it’s really good! And for all the info on the ingredients beforehand. Carry on the good work. 😊
Thank you so much for your lovely comment! Glad you enjoyed it!
We loved this recipe. I replaced the butter with coconut oil and avoided the cream, to make a vegan version, and it was delicious. Thanks so much for it.
A great dish – thank you for sharing. I ate mine with some plain smoked fish and it was great.
looks good,lm giving a try to eat even less meat than l do now.
Hey wow! I’m surprised to see a person from the UK liking Indian food! Of course, I know to cook this. Yet, I tried this way and the taste was awesome! Actually, it was quite better than my usual makhani – I’m not sure how!
Thanks a ton for these recipes, love to you and your kids, your family! xoxo
Take care, stay safe!
Is it one tbsp fresh ginger or dried ginger?
Fresh!
Hi there,
There’s a lot of garlic in this recipe! Presumably you can use less if not so keen on garlic. Otherwise looks great and will try it tonight. Only have dry ingredients though. 😕
Thank you!
Yes I go large on garlic for sure, though I’d say 6 cloves would be smaller cloves, 3 if they’re larger cloves, I will update the recipe to clarify that. You can certainly reduce the amount, no worries at all. Enjoy!
I ended up doubling it to use the rest of the lentils I had on hand and this was a major win! Wonderful flavor and I can’t wait to have it as leftovers since I know the flavors will just get better with a few days in the fridge. Thanks for the great recipe!
Probably the worst Dahl recipe I’ve tried. Just tastes like Garam masala
I’m sorry you had a bad experience with my recipe. Admittedly I’m a little heavy handed on the garam masala with this one, I do love the stuff and it makes this a fairly accessible recipe. I hope you were able to find a way to alter the recipe more to your tastes so you could still enjoy your dinner.
Can we hold the crème? If so what would we use instead? Sans coconut milk. My family doesn’t like.
You can just the leave the cream out, if you’re happy with a more soupy finish you don’t really need to replace it. Add more water if it’s too thick. Otherwise, if coconut milk is not an option, maybe cashew cream or oat cream would be an idea?
Fantastic. Just what I was craving. Perfect spices.. thank you for the recipe.
Can you freeze this dish?
Yes! It freezes well for a few months 🙂
Loved this. I accidentally used split green peas (instead of green lentils), and ended up having to add another 3/4 cup of boiling water, letting the daal cook longer, but it came out delicious! Later on I watched your video and I see you seem to be using French Green Lentils (Puey Lentils) — different from green lentils from the Indian store, for example. Do you recommend using the french greens vs. regular green lentils?
I’m so glad this turned out well for you even using split green peas. I love using normal green lentils for this – my photos show it with normal green lentils. My videographer used french green lentils when she made the video and that works great too – you can see there’s a little difference in the texture where those lentils stay a little firmer – but I think the normal green lentils are my favorite and they are the cheapest ones too.
Ah OK–so good to know, Christine, thanks for explaining that! I’ll try it again with regular store bought green lentils and see how it unfolds. Really delicious and pretty straightforward too. I’d say the longest task was chopping four tomatoes, ha! Thanks so much for sharing these recipes with us, I look forward to trying others of yours as well.
My wife and I made this recipe and we absolutely loved it! It had wonderful flavor and we will definitely be making it again. Thank you for the recipe.
That’s great to hear, thanks so much for the feedback!
I’ve really struggled to find fenugreek seeds – could I replace them with Fenugreek Leaves?
If so – in what quantity and when to add to the recipe?
Many thanks
Chris
Hi Chris, any chance you can get mustard seeds? They’re a more appropriate swap. Fenugreek leaves are quite different to the seeds.
Looks more like 4 servings!! Recipe is not updated just FYI. Thank you, delicious.
Delicious! I skipped the dairy by using homemade cashew cream (raw cashews blended with just enough nondairy milk to cover till smooth).
Hello, would you recommend fresh ginger or dried ginger for this recipe?
Fresh is my preference (I actually buy chopped frozen ginger to avoid all the grating!) but dried will certainly work, my videographer used dried when she made the video for this and was happy with the result.
Excellent recipe. Have made it many times. Thank you for the recipe.
I love this!! I made it tonight. I tripled the garlic and doubled the seasonings. lol. We love super strong flavors. It’s delicious