This is one of the most popular Punjabi dal – Dal Makhani. Interestingly this is very similar to the Madras Lentils you might have tasted at Costco. Most people order this dal when in an Indian restaurant. So here it is – Dal Makhani in Instant Pot. Black gram lentils and red kidney beans prepared with onion, tomatoes, lots of ginger, garlic and butter. Dal Makhani goes really well with basmati rice and naan. To make this a quick meal, I cooked pot-in-pot Brown Rice along with the dal.
As the name suggests, this dal is prepared with butter…makhani. So let loose and add on the butter when preparing this dal. However skip the butter and add oil to make this dish vegan. This was my favorite dal when growing up and it still is. Usually this dal is slow cooked, which can take hours, however here I have used the pressure cooker to prepare it in 50 minutes, most of which is passive time.
How to make Dal Makhani in Instant Pot?
I use black gram lentils (sabut urad) and red kidney beans (rajma) for this recipe. Start with soaking the lentils and beans in ample water for 4 hours or overnight. The soaking is mainly required for the kidney beans, but I find it easier to just soak them together. We will use the basic pantry ingredients in this Dal Makhani. The only 4 fresh things required are – onion, tomato, ginger and garlic.
When you are ready to cook, start with sautéing butter, cumin seeds and carom seeds in the Instant Pot. Then add onions and sauté for a few minutes until they start turning golden. Then add the tomatoes and spices. That is all the active work required for this recipe. Now just stir in the lentils and water, and set to pressure cook.
After the pressure cooking is done, Dal Makhani should be ready. If needed, add water to get the desired consistency. I like to stir in some lemon juice and garnish with cilantro. You can top with more butter to enhance the taste (and calories).
My mom likes to get the perfect reddish color similar to restaurant style dal makhani. Here is the trick I learnt from her to get that perfect reddish color – Soak 2-3 Kashmiri red chilis for half hour. Then grind them to a paste with some water and add when you add the tomatoes. You will love the color and the added taste from the kashmiri chili. I do this in my Pav Bhaji recipe too. Kashmiri chili’s are very mild, so they will not make the dal too spicy. Do skip the chili powder in the recipe if you go this route.
How to make Madras Lentils in Instant Pot?
I could not find much history for the name Madras Lentils. However Tasty Bite brand, available at Costco and other major grocery chains, has certainly made this a popular dish. Let’s see the differences between Dal Makhani and Madras lentils.
- The ingredients listed on the Tasty Bite Madras Lentils pack are – Water, Tomato, Lentils, Red Beans, Onions, Cream, Butter, Salt, Oil, Chillies, Cumin.
- My understanding is that they use adzuki beans (chori in hindi) in place of black gram lentils.
- The spices used are much lesser, only cumin and chili. So it is milder than Dal Makhani.
- Typically I don’t add any cream when making Dal Makhani at home. Cream is added in Madras Lentils.
Other than that, I really don’t see any differences. So you can follow the same recipe below with adzuki beans and just adjust the spices to make the popular Madras Lentils.
Dal Makhani with Pot-in-Pot Brown Rice
One of the big advantages of the Instant Pot is – the option to do Pot-in-Pot Cooking or PIP. This means being able to cook multiple things at a time, by also cooking in a small pot inside the main pot. To do pot-in-pot cooking, you need a tall trivet and stainless steel containers that you can use within the main pot. Here are the one’s I use:
Another important thing with pot-in-pot cooking is to consider the cooking time for the dishes you want to cook together. As an example, Dal Makhani takes about 30 mins to cook at high pressure and brown rice takes about 22-25 mins at high pressure. Hence if I add rice pot-in-pot with beans, they would get cooked well. I would not cook white rice along with Dal Makhani, however they would work well with split yellow lentils that cook in 5-6 mins at high pressure.
Once you add all ingredients for Dal in the instant pot, place the trivet and then the bowl of brown rice with water. This way they will both cook together. Enjoy the meal!
★ DID YOU TRY THIS RECIPE? Don’t forget to give a ★ rating. Just click on the stars in the Recipe Card to rate!
Instant Pot Dal Makhani / Madras Lentils with Brown Rice Recipe
Ingredients
- 1 cup Black gram lentils (Sabut Urad Dal) rinsed and soaked for 4 hours or overnight
- 1/4 cup Red Kidney Beans (Rajma)
- 1 tbsp Butter or Oil
- 1 tsp Cumin seeds (Jeera)
- 1 tbsp Ginger minced
- 1 tbsp Garlic minced
- 1 Onion medium, diced
- 2 Tomato medium, diced
- 3 cup Water for cooking
- 1 tbsp Lemon juice (optional)
- Cilantro to garnish
Spices
- 1 tsp Kashmiri red chili powder adjust quantity if using other chili powder
- 1/2 tsp Garam Masala
- 1 tsp Coriander powder (Dhaniya powder)
- 1 tsp Salt adjust to taste
For Brown Rice
- 1 cup Brown Rice rinsed
- 1.25 cup Water
- 1 tbsp Ghee or Oil (optional)
- 1 tsp Salt (optional)
Instructions
- Rinse and soak lentils and beans in water for 4 hours or overnight.
- Start the pressure cooker in saute mode and let it heat. Add oil and cumin seeds.
- When the cumin seeds change color, add onions, ginger and garlic. Sauté for about 3 minutes.
- Add tomatoes and spices. Stir and saute for another 2 minutes.
- Drain the water from the soaked lentils and beans. Add them to the instant pot. Add water and mix the ingredients.
- (optional) In a steel bowl, add the ingredients for brown rice. Please a tall trivet and the bowl of rice on top of the trivet.
- Press cancel and close the lid with vent in sealing position. Change the instant pot setting to bean/chili, which will set the timer to 30 minutes of high pressure cooking.
- When the instant pot beeps, do a natural pressure release. Open the lid.
- (optional) Using tongs, carefully take out the bowl of basmati rice. Then take out the trivet.
- Stir the dal well. If needed, add water to get the desired consistency. If you like, add more garam masala to taste.
- Stir in the lemon juice and garnish with cilantro. Dal Makhani is ready to be served.
Video
Notes
- To make this recipe vegan, just skip the butter and replace with oil of your liking.
- You can also add cream or coconut cream to make this dal richer. I did not add any and it was finger licking tasty even without any cream 🙂
- Mom's tips to get the perfect reddish color similar to restaurant style dal makhani – Soak 2-3 Kashmiri red chilis for half hour. Then grind them to a paste with some water and add when you add the tomatoes. Kashmiri chili’s are very mild, so they will not make the dal too spicy. Do skip the chili powder in the recipe if you go this route.
- This recipe was created in a 6qt Instant Pot DUO60 Multi-use Pressure Cooker and has been updated to make it easier.
Nutrition
Note: Nutrition for Dal Makhani only, does not include Basmati Rice. Nutrition values are my best estimates. If you rely on them for your diet, use your preferred nutrition calculator.
♥ Spread the Love If you make this recipe, share your food photo with hashtag #pipingpotcurry on Facebook or Instagram, so we can see it and others can enjoy it too! Thank you ♥
Like the video, Subscribe to my Youtube Channel for more tasty videos. Looking for Instant Pot recipes, check out my Instant Pot Recipes board on Pinterest.
Pin it for later:
Made this tonight and it was amazing!!! If I could give it more stars I would!! My husband said he would take this over our favorite Indian restaurant any day. This will definitely be in regular rotation at our house.
Hey Mary – So so glad to hear that you and your husband enjoyed the Dal Makhani. Very much our favorite coming from a Punjabi family. Thank you so much for sharing back your review!
If I were to add coconut cream, would that be before pressurizing, or after it all cooks?
Hello Mary – I would add cream after pressure cooking the lentils. Hope you enjoy it!
Great recipe! I can’t wait to try this out.
I’m very new to using an Instant Pot. Could you give instructions on which setting to place the instant pot on for this recipe?
Thanks so much!
Hey Ruchi – Set on bean/chili mode for 30 minutes. This is basically a default to high pressure cooking. Let me know if you have any other questions. Hope you enjoy the Dal Makhani!
Too much of AD in your video. Every second its coming. So dont have the patience to watch your videos. Its irritating. Do u have your videos anywhere else .
You can watch the videos on Youtube if you like. Here is the link – https://www.youtube.com/c/pipingpotcurry. I have the ads setup to only show a single one at the start of the video. I am surprised you are seeing more than one.
I did not see more than one ad. I was able to watch the video just fine.
Thank you for checking Ruchi. I confirmed with the ad company that they would never show ads more than 30 seconds long. It is possible there could be 2 small 5 second ads before the video. I am always trying to have a balance between keeping readers happy and showing ads, so they are not excessive.
I made dal makhani, came out well. Recipe was easy to follow. I did not have Kashmir chili, will get some for the next time I try this dish !
Hey Niru – Glad to hear you enjoyed the Dal Makhani. Thank you for sharing back your review!
Hello – I plan on making this recipe this week. Just a quick question, will it still work in the instant pot if I double the ingredients? Thank you.
Hey Amanda – Yes, you can easily double this recipe in a 6qt or 8qt instant pot. Hope you enjoy it!
This was pretty good, but I think I was looking for a more tomato-y dish (dal makhani served at restaurants seems kind of more like a butter chicken/paneer in terms of buttery tomato gravy). I actually think the flavor was pretty creamy/buttery on its own, so the main issue for me was the lack of tomato. Do you have any suggestions for adding tomato gravy? Would simply cooking it with additional chopped raw tomatoes be the way to go? Perhaps adding a can of tomato sauce? Would definitely appreciate your thoughts! I’ll try to incorporate your suggestion and return to rate the revised dish! Thanks again! Love your recipes.
Hey Ian – I would suggest to replace the tomatoes with a 14oz can of diced tomatoes (that is equal to 4-6 tomatoes). Thank you for checking in for suggestions, and trying the recipes. Would love to hear if this worked to your taste. Thank you!
We made this tonight and it was OUTSTANDING! So good that I caught my husband eating leftovers out of the bowl later! We’ll definitely be making this again.
Oh and we added the dried peppers I read about in the comments and really liked the flavor and color they added 🙂
Hey Jessica – So happy to hear that you all enjoyed the Dal Makhani. It is the favorite one for Punjabi’s in North India. Glad you liked the tips from my mom to add the color and flavor from the dry red chili’s 🙂
Just made this.. family loved it .. thank you
Thank you for always taking the time to share back your review, Radha. It is so helpful and great to hear back from readers 🙂
Hello — I made this recipe months ago, and when I went back to make it, saw that it was re-organized. In the original did you include asafoeteda? I swear I bought it just for this, but now I don’t see it listed.
Hey Susan – I am glad to see you back to make the recipe. You are right that I updated the recipe. When I created a video and added cooking brown rice pot-in-pot with the lentils, I simplified the recipe and skipped asafoetida as many readers don’t have it in their pantry. As you do have it, add 1/4 tsp after adding the oil and cumin seeds in step 2. I hope you enjoy the lentils 🙂
Thanks! This will be the third time I’m making it. The second time I didn’t notice the changes at first, and I accidentally left out the dried peppers, because I think they were previously mentioned within the recipe itself. Maybe it’s just me, but I noticed a difference in taste without them. So I went back and checked to make sure I didn’t leave anything out, and that’s when I saw that I left out the peppers and that the asafoetida was gone. I remember asking the man at the Indian grocery where I may find the asafoetida, and he asked me if I was making dal makhani. 🙂
Oh…you are intriguing me to add it back now 🙂 I do agree that the dried peppers add a wonderful color and taste to the Dal Makhani. That is my mom’s trick to add the reddish color to the Dal. I hope you continue to enjoy the recipes. Thank you for the honest feedback. I love to hear it!
Hey Meeta, I’m a big fan of your recipes. The Pav bhaji, your mom’s chicken curry are amongst our family favorites! Quick question on the dal makhani, would you use the same amount of cooking time if it wasn’t a PIP? I’m not planning on cooking the rice as I don’t have a PIP so wondering if you’d still recommend 30 minutes of high pressure cooking. Thanks!
Hey Sarah – Thank you! I am glad you have enjoyed many of my recipes. I suggest the same cooking time (30 minutes at high pressure) for Dal Makahni, even if you don’t cook rice with it. Hope you enjoy it!
I have a couple questions. Not sure if you’ll see this in time so I might not make it (for company tomorrow) if you aren’t able to reply in time! I was wondering if I use split black lentils (which is what I have at home) if I still need to soak overnight? I used them in an IP soup the other day that cooked for 5 minutes and they were perfect! Also, can I cheat and use drained, canned, kidney beans?
Thanks so much! Looking forward to trying more of your recipes! I love your IP Briyani!
Hey Tara – You can use split black lentils and if they cooked perfectly in 5 minutes last time, then do 5 minutes. Also, if you use canned kidney beans, they would cook perfectly along with the split black lentils in 5 mins as well. So the combination will work. The soaking was mainly for the kidney beans, so no soaking will work as you are using canned kidney beans. You will not be able to do PIP brown rice with this, but could do PIP white rice if you like. Hope you enjoy it!
Awesome! Thank you so much! Such a quick reply!
How did you do the rice, how much water to how much rice? I’ve never tried pot in pot cooking and I am curious! Thanks!
Hey Stacy – Great question. I have updated the ingredient list to mention the details. I use 1 cup Brown rice to 1.25 cup water. Pot-in-pot is a wonderful convenience, you will definitely love it.
I am so making this, I love the Madras Lentils. Great to dehydrate for hiking, now I can make my own! Yes!
I have a huge jar of kashmiri chili powder and it’s the most brilliant red ever!
Hello – Thank you! I would love to hear how it turns out. On a side note, Loved your blog!
Hi! What is the best way to grind those ingredients to a paste? Food processor? I found your site when looking for IP paneer butter masala and your recipe was amazing (I’ve already made it twice!). I can’t wait to try this one!
Hello Caitlin – Glad to hear you have enjoyed the paneer butter masala :-). I usually grind using my blender, which works well if you have a small jar. Something like a magic bullet or a food processor could work too. Hope you enjoy this one as well!
Can you omit the kashimiri chili’s? My kids don’t eat super spicy.
Hey Khadija – Yes, you can always omit the chili’s. The kashmiri chilies are very mild, but give a good natural color to the dal. You might get a little lighter color if you omit them, but the taste would still be great 🙂
Hi – quick substitution question – I was not able to find whole kashmiri chilis at any of my local markets. I have the powder, but not the whole chili. Is there anything else that could be substituted? Thanks!
You can surely use the powder that you have. The main reason for the whole kashmiri chili is to get the reddish color in the lentils. However they will taste as good with the powder. I hope you enjoy it 🙂
Thanks! Can you recommend a measurement for the Kashmiri powder I should add to the paste? ????
Sure, it would be 2 tsp of kashmiri chili powder (this one is pretty mild and you mentioned that you found this one). If using a spicier chili powder, then reduce to your taste. Hope you enjoy the dal 🙂
Hi. One doubt. I don’t have chili/ bean mode.
Is it ok to do the manual mode. If so what will be the time tht needs to be set.
Hey Sathya – Bean/Chili mode is a default setting for 30 mins at Manual high pressure. Hope you enjoy it ????
Thanks for sharing recipe! I made today Dal Makhni using your recipe spices. It came out good. As always, I forgot to soak dal and rajma overnight. I just soaked them for 30 min in boiling water and then manyally set IP at 90 low presurre. It came out fully cooked. Just to add punjabi smell, added black cardamom and two cloves.
Hey Poonam – Happy to hear, you enjoyed the Dal Makhani. I like the idea of using low pressure to get a creamier texture for the dal. Love the hack to soak in boiling water, we all need those 🙂
I’m not quite sure mine came out correct, but I LOVE it. I wasn’t sure how large you meant for the tomatoes. The ones I had were, I thought, medium, so I used three. So “paste” wasn’t really a paste, more the consistency of a can of crushed tomatoes. (I used my cuisinart.) Therefore it may be too tomato-y, as it’s not quite as brown as what you have above. But it’s creamy, and the flavor is fantastic.
I came across your site because I had been searching for a recipe for dal makhani. I friend had sent me one from a vegetarian cooking site, it was terrible — somehow tasteless. Not this!
Hey Susan – I am so glad you enjoyed the dal makhani. It is one of our favorite lentils! Based on your description, you did add as much tomatoes as needed and seems like it was creamy ????
Made this for hubby’s birthday, it’s his favorite dal. Great creamy texture. Next time I will use larger onions and tomatoes as you mentioned above. I am excited to try more of your dal recipes!
Great, glad you liked the dal. It is my favorite, being a Punjabi ????
The flavor turned out nice, but the consistency wasn’t quite right. And mine didn’t have the nice dark brown/black color as yours in the photo. Can you offer some advice?
1. Should I use split lentils or whole?
2. What size onion? (The size of a tennis ball? Or larger? 2 cups diced? etc)
3. What size tomato?
Hello Bonnie – Thanks for trying the recipe. The consistency should be like a thick soup. Great questions, my responses below:
1. For this dal makhani, we use whole black lentils.
2. Yes, large onions size of a tennis ball sounds right. It would be say 3 cups chopped.
3. Medium or large tomatoes would be fine. I updated the recipe to say large, so it is easier for future readers.
oooh I cant wait to make this. I love Indian cuisine. Thank you for all your beautiful recipes 🙂 xo
Thanks Cathy! Would love to hear how it turns out…