Spinach dal - Palakura pappu - Dal palak

Easy and healthy spinach dal that can be a great side dish for rice or any Indian flatbread like whole wheat roti, millet Bakri. You can have this as a soup also for a light dinner!

Spinach dal, called Palakura pappu in Telugu, and dal palak in Hindi is a staple dal in almost every Indian home.

This is my mother's recipe and very easy for anyone to make easily at home.

Simple spinach dal with rice is just enough for a hearty and healthy meal. Make this dal palak for any meal of the day and enjoy it with rice or roti.

Let's begin making spinach dal:

Here, I'm showing you two methods to make palak dal easily at home.

Method 1

We usually make palak dal at home by following this method. I prefer using this method if you are cooking dal for less than six people.

In this method, we cook plain lentils first, and then tempering with spinach leaves is added as the second step.

By cooking lentils in this way, we need not clean the Instant pot inner pot or pressure cooker. Check my detailed post on cooking pigeon peas.

• Cook the toor dal and keep it aside. Check my detailed post on how to cook toor dal using instant pot or pressure cooker. 
• While the dal is cooking, wash and drain spinach leaves. Chop them roughly and keep them aside. If you are using baby spinach leaves, you need not chop them.

• Gather all other ingredients as shown below.

• Heat a pan and add oil once it is hot.

• Add cumin seeds, mustard seeds, and hing to the hot oil. Make sure to be a little away as seeds will splutter.

• Now add red and green chili to the pan.

• Once these turn lightly brown, after a minute or so, add chopped spinach to the pan.

• Let the spinach leaves cook for 3 to 4 minutes.

• To these wilted spinach leaves, add cooked and mashed dal.

• Now add coriander powder, turmeric powder, and salt.

• Mix it well and let the spinach lentil curry cook for 5 minutes.

• Once the spinach leaves are cooked properly, switch off the flame and add lemon juice to the spinach dal.

• Mix it well, and the Spinach dahl is ready to serve!

Method 2 (Using Instant Pot):

You can use this method when you are cooking spinach lentils dal for more than six people, for dinner parties or gatherings.

Or if you want to cook dal and rice in an Instant pot, use this method. Both dal and rice will be cooked at once, especially useful for dinners!

• Start Instant pot in saute mode.
• Once it is hot, add oil to the Inner Pot.
• Now add cumin seeds, mustard seeds, and hing.
• Once the seeds start to splutter, add green and red chili.
• If you are using garlic or ginger or both, add it now.
• Also, add curry leaves if using.
• At this stage, you can remove some part of tempering. Add this saved tempering at the end of the dish.
• To this tempering, add washed dal and water.
• Close the Instant Pot with lid, seal the vent. Select Manual or Pressure cook mode and cook the toor dal for 6 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 toor 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 10 minutes.
• Take the rice bowl and trivet out of the Instant Pot.
• Start the instant pot on saute mode again.
• To this cooked lentils, add turmeric powder, salt, and chopped spinach leaves.
• Mix it well and let the dal cook for 3 to 4 minutes.
• Take the inner pot out and add tempering (if you saved it in an earlier step) and lemon juice, mix it well.
• Indian style Spinach lentils is ready to serve!

Recipe Notes and variations

• Do not add lemon juice while the lentil mixture is cooking. It will turn bitter.
• Instead of lemon, you can also use tamarind, raw mango, gooseberry(Amla), raw mango powder for tartness in spinach dal.
• If using raw mango or tamarind, or gooseberry, add it along with spinach leaves so that both get cooked.
• You can grate or finely chop raw mango and Amla if using them.
• If using raw mango powder, add it while adding salt. The color of the dal might be a little dark when using raw mango powder.
• You can use baby spinach leaves also for making this dahl recipe. Do not overcook the spinach leaves in that case.
• We usually do not eat tomatoes and spinach in the same meal. And I avoid adding tomato to this palak dal.
• While making this recipe, I haven't used garlic. I usually add garlic and sometimes grated ginger to make any dal.
• In any authentic Indian dal recipe, curry leaves are the main ingredient. I skipped the curry leaves when shooting this recipe. If you are using curry leaves, add them along with green chili.

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You might be interested in other lentil recipes. Do check them out!