What is tadka? | How to make Tadka for Dal

Learn To Cook | Tadka

So, what exactly is a tadka? Tadka or tempering is technique involves adding spices to hot oil. it remains a delicate technique which makes your dish from good to perfect. Keep the oil lukewarm and the spices won’t sizzle Heat the oil too much and the spices will burn. Lets check the simplest way of adding a tadka on a plain yellow dal.

Servings

3-4

Prep Time

10 min

Cooking Time

10 mins

Good For

lunch / dinner

Tadka on Simple Yellow Dal (Split Pigeon Peas / Lentils)

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So what exactly is a tadka? Tadka or tempering is a technique that involves adding spices to hot oil. It is mainly done to extract flavours from whole spices in the oil. Tadka, tarka, phodni, chonk or tempering, call it what you may, it remains a delicate technique. Keep the oil lukewarm and the spices won’t sizzle Heat the oil too much and the spices will burn.

The best vessel to perform a tadka is a round-bottomed one like a kadhai or handi. It keeps the oil and spices together which allows for maximum flavor. But if you don’t have one, you can always do it on a flat-bottomed vessel.

Recipe Card

Ingredients

  • 1 cup cooked Dal (leftover dal can be used)
  • 1 tbsp ghee
  • 1 tsp mustard seeds
  • 1 tsp cumin seeds
  • 10-15 curry leaves

    • Directions

    Step 1: Cooking the Dal

  • You first need to cook simple yellow day like I have shown in the previous post of how to cook Dal & Rice using a pressure cooker in this learn to cook series
  • Or if you have some left over day from the previous night, you can use that dal and add an extra flavour by adding a tadka to it.

    • Step 2: Prepare the Tadka

  • Once the cooked dal is ready, take a handi or choose any deep vessel you have.
  • Add ghee in the handi
  • Heat the ghee. Let it heat on low to medium heat just so that when you place your hand on top, you can feel the heat emanating from it.
  • the reason you should turn down the heat, is if its too high, the oil ghee becomes so hot that the tadka will just burn in an instant as soon as you add the ingredients in the hot ghee as ghee heats faster than most cooking oils.
  • add the mustard & cumin seeds, and hear them sizzle

    • Step 3: Adding dal in Tadka

  • add salt to taste and let it boil.
  • You can also add 1tsp of sugar or a bit of jaggery if you want the dal to be sweeter. (optional)
  • let it boil on medium heat for 5 mins.
  • Take it off the gas and the dal with simple tadka is ready !!!

    • Extra Tips

  • If you have a cooked yellow dal that will reduce the time to cook this tadka on dal
  • You can enjoy this with steaming rice. This is the simplest form of adding a tadka to a dal. You can do a lot of variations to this.

    • Don’t want to read, Watch the Video Recipe

    Read my notes below or watch the video

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    akshay-talpade

    Hi I am Akshay

    I am a Software Engineer by profession but a foodie at heart. I am in love with food! I enjoy the explosion of flavours on my taste buds and am always ready to try different cuisines. One of my fondest memories as a child is sitting on the kitchen counter, watching my mother cook. But as I travelled for work, I missed the tastes of home.
    And that was the birth of Simply Simple Cooking YouTube Channel & later this blog.

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