Instant Pot dal tadka

This Instant pot dal tadka is a quick version of traditional Indian style dal tadka recipe in an Instant Pot.

Dal and rice is a comforting and filling meal for any day. Using this recipe, you can make both dal and rice in under 30 minutes and your lunch or dinner is sorted out for a busy day.

Let's begin making dal tadka:

• Start Instant pot in saute mode.
• Once it is hot, add oil to the Inner Pot.

• Now add cumin seeds, mustard seeds, green chili, and chopped ginger and garlic.

• Once the garlic turns little brown, you can dish out the tempering into a small bowl so that you can add it at last. (optional)
• Now add finely chopped onions and let them cook for a couple of minutes.

• To this onion mixture, add finely chopped tomatoes and let them cook for 3 to 4 minutes.

• To this cooked tomato, add coriander seeds powder, garam masala powder, turmeric powder, salt, and mix it well.

• Now add washed dal (mix of toor, moong, masoor, and sabut masoor dal) to the inner pot.

• Add water to this now.

• Close the Instant Pot with lid, seal the vent. Select Manual or Pressure cook mode and cook the dal for 5 minutes on HIGH pressure.
• For cooking rice along with dal, place a trivet on the top of dal. Then place the rice bowl on it and pressure cook for 5 minutes on HIGH pressure. 
• If you want to cook rice with this dal, soak dal for 30 minutes. By soaking dal, we can cook both rice and dal at the same time.
• Once the Instant Pot beeps, do a manual pressure release after 5 minutes.

• Take the rice bowl and trivet out of the Instant Pot if cooking rice along with dal.
• Mix the dal well and adjust salt if required. If you have saved tempering from the first step, add it now.

• Garnish the dal with coriander leaves, and Indian-style dal tadka is ready to serve!

Recipe Notes and variations:

• You can skip onions and garlic to make this dal on fasting days.
• You can use any dal to make this dal taka. 
• This dal tadka will taste good even with only one type of dal. It can be any dal - toor dal(yellow pigeon peas), masoor dal (red lentils), moong dal (yellow lentils), or whole masoor dal (brown lentils).
• Given timings work for almost all types of lentils mentioned above.
• If using only toor dal or arhar dal (pigeon peas lentils), soak them for 30 minutes and cook for 5 minutes on HIGH pressure.
• If you forget to soak toor dal, cook them for 6 or 7 minutes on HIGH pressure.
• If you use old lentils, it may take a bit longer time to cook them. In that case, skip adding salt before and add it after you pressure cook the dal. With added salt, lentils might not cook properly.

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