Black daal recipe: Dishoom's slow-cooked Bombay classic
Whole urad lentils simmered for hours until they turn creamy on their own, finished with butter and cream the way Bombay's Irani cafés always served them.
Black daal is the dish regulars queue for outside Dishoom, a slow-cooked pot of whole urad lentils that turns creamy without a drop of cornflour, finished with butter and cream the way Bombay's Irani cafés always served it.
The trick is time, not technique: the lentils simmer for hours until their skins split and break down into the cooking liquid, thickening the daal from the inside. Dishoom's own recipe, published in its cookbook "From Bombay with Love," calls for a four-to-five-hour cook, most of it unattended.
Ingredients
The lentils do the work; four hours of patience is the only real ingredient.
- 150g whole black urad daal (whole black lentils)
- 6g garlic paste
- 5g ginger paste
- 35g tomato purée
- 4g fine sea salt
- 1/3 tsp deggi mirch or mild chilli powder
- 1/4 tsp garam masala
- 45g unsalted butter
- 45ml double cream
- Chapatis, to serve
Method
- Rinse the daal in several changes of cold water, swirling and pouring off the cloudy liquid each time, until it runs clear. This washes away surface starch that would otherwise make the finished daal gluey rather than silky.
- Put the daal in a large pot with at least 2 litres of cold water, bring to the boil, then simmer for 2-2.5 hours, skimming off any foam and topping up water so the lentils stay covered. They are ready when the skins have split and the centres have gone completely soft.
- Rest the pot off the heat for 15 minutes, then stir the garlic paste, ginger paste, tomato purée, salt and chilli powder into a rough paste in a small bowl, ready to go in together.
- Drain off most of the cooking water and top up with fresh boiling water to cover the lentils by about 3cm. Add the aromatic paste and the butter, then boil hard for 30 minutes, stirring often: this aggressive boil is what starts breaking the lentils down into a creamy base, not a thin soup.
- Lower the heat and simmer gently for 1-1.5 hours more, stirring regularly and adding boiling water if the pot looks dry, until the daal has thickened into a dark, glossy stew with no loose grains left whole.
- Stir in the cream and the garam masala, then cook for a final 15 minutes. Taste for salt and serve hot with chapatis for scooping.
Why it keeps better with cream, not water
Leftover black daal thickens further in the fridge, so reheat it with a splash of cream or a cream-and-water mix rather than water alone, which flattens the flavour. It is traditionally the backbone of a Dishoom thali rather than a headline dish, best paired with something sharp, like the pickle-forward regional cooking at Romy Gill's Pem in London, or a simple cucumber raita to cut the richness.
For a lighter version, swap the butter and cream for a knob of ghee and a splash of coconut cream stirred in at the end; the lentils will still carry the dish.
Can black daal be made ahead? Yes, and it improves overnight in the fridge as the lentils keep absorbing the sauce; reheat gently with a splash of cream.
