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 yet healthy 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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Dal tadka recipe:

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