Punjabi & North Indian · Main
Rajma Chawal
- Intermediate
- 45 min
- roughly 2 of 4 for cost
- Vegetarian
- Vegan
Leads with an earthy, grounding base, warm spice humming through the middle, with a clean, bright snap.
Ingredients
- 300 g rajma, Jammu chitra if you can get them
- 1.2 litres water, plus 1.5 litres for soaking
- 350 g onions, chopped fine
- 400 g ripe tomatoes, blended smooth
- 25 g ginger and 20 g garlic, pounded together to a paste
- 60 ml mustard oil
- 3 g cumin seeds
- 1 black cardamom, cracked
- 6 g ground coriander
- 3 g deghi mirch
- 2 g turmeric
- 3 g garam masala
- 2 g amchur (dried mango powder)
- 10 g salt
- 300 g aged basmati, rinsed until the water runs clear
- 15 g coriander leaves, chopped with their stems
The skills inside
Reducing a sauceMashing & puréeing
Allergen screen
Found: mustard
Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.
Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.
Method
- Soak the rajma 8 hours in cold water, then pressure cook them in the fresh water with the black cardamom and 5 g salt for 25 minutes, until a bean smears against the pan side rather than splitting. 480 min
- Heat the mustard oil until it smokes and its sharpness burns off, drop the flame, and fry the cumin until the seeds darken one shade and stop sputtering.
- Add the onions and cook 18 minutes over medium heat, stirring only when they catch, until they collapse, release the pan and go the colour of an old penny. 18 min
- Stir in the ginger garlic paste until the raw smell turns sweet, then pull the pan off the flame, add the coriander, deghi mirch and turmeric with a spoonful of water, and set it back on.
- Add the tomato and bhuna for 15 minutes without hurrying it, stirring, until the mass draws away from the sides in one piece and a rim of red oil stands clear at the edge: everything else depends on reaching this point. 15 min
- Tip in the beans with their liquor, mash a ladleful against the pan side, simmer 20 minutes until the gravy coats a spoon, then finish with the garam masala, amchur and coriander and serve over the drained basmati. 20 min
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the techniques it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
Reducing a sauce 95 recipes
- A steady simmer with the surface moving, never a rolling boil that throws it up the sides and scorches what is left on the base.
- Judged by behaviour rather than the clock: it coats the back of a spoon and holds a clean line when a finger is drawn through it.
- The drop in volume is visible against the side of the pan: there is a line to see, not a guess about whether anything has happened.
- Seasoned at the end and not the beginning, because salt concentrates at exactly the rate everything else does.
- Nothing is catching underneath: a spoon drawn across the base comes up clean, with no browned film building where the heat is fiercest.
Where it goes wrong It was seasoned at the start and then reduced by half. The salt concentrated along with everything else, so the sauce reaches perfect body and is too salty to serve. And the only remedy is to dilute it and reduce it all over again.
Mashing & puréeing 114 recipes
- Smooth to the degree the dish asks for, judged on the tongue rather than by eye: no lumps, no fibres, no grit, unless texture is the point.
- No gluey elasticity: a spoonful drops cleanly off the spoon rather than stretching in a rope behind it.
- The consistency holds: it mounds on a spoon and stays there, neither slumping flat nor standing so stiff that a spoon has to cut it.
- Nothing separates on the plate: no water or fat weeping out into a ring within a minute of serving.
- The colour is even throughout, with no streaks of unincorporated fat, liquid, or seasoning at the edges of the bowl.
Where it goes wrong A starchy ingredient met a high-speed blade, so the cells burst and released their starch: what should be light comes out as an elastic glue that lifts off the spoon in one mass.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Chianti Classico or Barbera d’Alba
- Also Right
- Vermentino for the lighter plates
- From the Taps
- Italian pilsner
- Zero-Proof
- San Pellegrino Sanbittèr
Tomato’s acid demands equal acid: Italian reds evolved beside the sauce, and the regional pairing is the safest law in wine.
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