"Chana" and "Toor" dal - differences?
thomas giammo
because we were unable to locate in our local super markets the "yellow
lentils" that it called for.
Now that I have found a food store specializing in Indian foods, I have
the opposite problem - too many types of yellow lentils. There are two
types sold by the store - "Chana Dal" and "Toor Dal". To the unpracticed
eye, they appear to be virtually identical. Yet, they are packaged by the
same manufacturer and so do not appear to be alternate names for the same
item. The clerk didn't know anything about foods and was no help. A
passing customer volunteered that Chana Dal and Toor Dal were quite
different, but was unable to express in English what the differences are.
The most I got was that Toor Dal was better for curry.
Now I am curious. What exactly are "yellow lentils"? Is that what "Dal"
means? Are the two kinds really different? What are the differences?
How should you use each kind?
Thanks in advance for your help.
Tom Giammo
Ceon Ramon
thomas giammo <gia...@access4.digex.net> wrote:
>the opposite problem - too many types of yellow lentils. There are two
>types sold by the store - "Chana Dal" and "Toor Dal". To the unpracticed
>eye, they appear to be virtually identical. Yet, they are packaged by the
>same manufacturer and so do not appear to be alternate names for the same
>item.
>Now I am curious. What exactly are "yellow lentils"? Is that what "Dal"
>means? Are the two kinds really different? What are the differences?
>How should you use each kind?
You need to lay your hands on a good Indian cookbook/reference book. I
have (and very much like) several books by Madhur Jaffrey, but I've heard
others speak highly of Julie Sahi (I'm sure I've misspelled that, and I'm
equally sure that someone will correct it).
Here what Madhur Jaffrey has to say in _An Invitation to Indian Cooking_
(Vintage Books, c. 1973):
"Dals--lentils or pulses--are varieties of dried beans and peas. In some
form or other they are eaten daily in almost every Indian home,
frequently providing the poor with their only source of protein. While
people in England and America speak of making their living as earning
their "bread and butter," Indians who earn a bare wage complain that they
make just enough for their "dal roti" (roti is bread).
Both the rice eaters and the wheat eaters of India consume dal with equal
enthusiasm. Each state, however, cooks its dals in a completely
different way. Punjab excels in whole, unhulled dals--whole urad and
rajma cooked slowly in the clay oven (tandoor), as well as in chana
bhatura, a spicy dish of chickpeas eaten with puffy deep-fried bread.
The fussy Delhi-wallahs like the hulled and split moon dal, delicately
spiced with cumin and sprinkled with lime juice and browned onions. In
Bombay, a hot, sweet and sour toovar dal is made by the addition of
tamarind paste and jaggery (a dry, lumpy variety of molasses) to the
cooked dal. In Madras, the scorchingly spicy dal often contains
vegetables--eggplant, okra, or tomatoes.
In America and England, where a very thin, liquidlike dal is often served
in Indian and Pakistani restaurants, people have come to the conclusion
that dal is a soup. Well, it isn't; one of North India's favorite
expressions, "Dey dal may pani" (put water in the dal), refers to foods
that are diluted in order to stretch them out among more people, a
practice which is, naturally, deplored. A well-cooked dal is generally
quite thick. It is hard to describe the exact consistency: it is
thinner than a cooked cereal, but not quite as thin as pea soup. Having
made that generalization, let me add that in some dal recipes the grains
stay dry and almost whole, while in others, particularly, some cooked in
southern India, the dal is indeed quite soupy."
[Then she gives a list of the various dals defined by shape and color;
here are the two that I think you're referring to]
CHANA DAL Hulled and split: round, yellow grain, larger than moong
dal. This dal is of the chickpea family.
ARHAR OR Hulled and split: round, dull yellow grain, slightly
TOOVAR DAL larger than chana dal and often with irregular edges.
-And now I've forgotten what your original question was -- you wanted to
know which one would be best suited to a particular soup? I'd guess that
the toovar dal is a pure lentil and might work better in a soup than a dal
of the chickpea family, but that's really a wild, uneducated guess.
Anyway, you wanted to know a bit about dals, and I trust this gives you a
starting point.
--Barbara
