Money Saving Recipes 001: Daal
Hello. I’m going to teach you some recipes I’ve picked up over the years that are cheap, easy to make, tasty, economical and nutritious. I got them from different social media chefs and have been eating them all my adult life.
Each recipe will be costed on the assumption that their ingredients must be bought from scratch and in whole. I will provide the per-serving price also.
As the majority of these recipes are from countries and cultures I don’t have any background in, I can’t say they’re completely authentic. What I can promise is that they taste good and are ideal for people for whom feeding yourself (and others) is a serious financial consideration.
I’d also encourage cooking these recipes in bulk. They all keep well in a fridge over a few days and almost all freeze well too. They’re mostly vegan as it’s cheaper but there’s one or two with meat also.
Lastly, the ingredients, amounts and timings are not set in stone. You can do what you want, it’s your tea and it’s your body.
Ingredients
- 1 cup lentils (red or yellow)
- 1 tsp turmeric
- 1 tsp garam masala
- 1 bulb of garlic
- salt to taste
- coriander
Optional ingredients for tadka
- 2 tbsp any oil
- a small onion
- 1 tsp cumin seeds
- 1 tsp mustard seeds
Method
- Wash your lentils thoroughly. The water should be clear before you put them in the pot. Scrub them with your fingers and really shake them up.
- In a pot add the lentils, spices, garlic cloves and cover with two cups of water, mix then boil for five minutes. At this point you can add a cube of vegetable stock for an even richer flavour. Make sure to chop the weird knobbly bits off the garlic but keep them intact. There’s no greater joy than biting into a soft clove.
- After boiling reduce heat to low/medium-low and let simmer, stirring occasionally. That’s it really. If you want to eat now, turn up the heat and add water as needed. I usually let it simmer as I prepare the tadka. Make sure it doesn’t stick or burn at the bottom, properly turn it in the pot as you do. Lentils are fucking nightmare to scrub off the bottom of a pot.
- Heat oil in a frying pan, add sliced onion, whole spices and fry til spices fragrant, onion crispy. The pan should be pretty hot, the spices crackling and popping.
- Pour tadka over daal in pot. This will temper the tadka and a whole new bunch of flavours to the daal. Can’t recommend it enough.
- Add chopped coriander and salt to taste. Serve it with your rice or bread and eat it with your fingers. After it cools down of course, it’ll be fucking roasting.
Notes
Daal refers to both split pulses (lentils, beans etc.) and the food made from them. It’s been around for time and for good reason: it’s mint. Full of protein and fibre, quick and easy, cheap as owt. Plus with all the different varieties of daals you can go mental and experiment. This one I make all the time, usually with red lentils as they seem to be most common in UK shops.
It’s super basic. After you get confident making it (which should be in no time at all) you can whack whatever you like in there. I like to add mushrooms, tomatoes and vegetable stock in place of some water but you can go with anything. Even other daals.
The tadka is completely optional but it’s not much of an investment and it makes a lot of difference. I would heartily recommend.
Eat it with bread or rice if you can. It’s lovely on its own but you get the most for your money by treating it like a curry. By the end you want it to be thicker, just to the point where the individual pulses start blending together.
Daal is a really great introduction to Indian cooking too: it’s low investment and effort compared to a curry. And curries aren’t hard or expensive to make either so that’s saying something.