Restaurant Style Dal Makhani - Instant Pot Recipe

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Cooking With Anadi

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Dal makhani is a rich and satisfying Punjabi recipe that’s packed with royalty! This was one of my favorites to enjoy at restaurants! It’s not typically made at home, but I’ve tried my hand at making this restaurant favorite. Check out my traditional Restaurant-Style Dal Makhani recipe! But now it’s time to adapt this classic to an Instant Pot recipe!

What Makes This Instant Pot Dal Makhani Recipe Great?

This Dal Makhani is:

• Creamy and buttery - just like the restaurant
• Costs less than $1.00 CAD per serving.
• Great with rice, roti or naan.
• Instant Pot Friendly

Not to worry if you don’t have an Instant Pot. This recipe can easily be adapted to be prepared just as well without one. All you need is a pressure cooker to cook the lentils, or, boil the kidney beans and the urad dal/black lentils on low heat until they mash easily. Check out the recipe here!

Why Make Dal Makhani in the Instant Pot?

As a busy guy, the Instant Pot really comes in handy! Yes, cooking is probably my favorite thing to do (apart from eating!), and I love making my favorite dishes in their traditional ways. However, there’s so much work that goes into getting these recipes up for you guys! Of course there’s the actual cooking involved, but I have videos to edit, these posts to write, Instagram to catch up on, just so much goes on!

The thing is, traditionally we have to soak the lentils and kidney beans for quite some time before cooking. It also takes time to sauté them before making the rest of the dish. I love to eat delicious food no matter what, so sometimes the shortcuts to greatness are necessary! That’s exactly what this one-pot dal makhani recipe is - a shortcut to deliciousness!

Tools Needed

• Instant pot
• Serving spoon
• Nonstick pan
• Food processor
• Wooden spoon
• Measuring cups

How to Prepare Dal Makhani in the Instant Pot?

For the Lentils

1. Add the lentils and kidney beans to the Instant pot with the rest of the ingredients, salt to taste and 3-4 cups of water.

2. Close the lid and set the knob to Sealing mode. Set the Instant Pot to Bean/Chili setting and cook for 45 minutes. Let the pressure release naturally, about 15-20 minutes.

3. Once cooked set the pot aside with the water, do not drain the cooking liquid. Lightly mash the lentils with the back of a serving spoon.

For the Tadka

1. Heat a pan on medium heat and add ghee, cumin seeds and hing. Cook until cumin seeds turn reddish brown and are aromatic.

2. In the meanwhile, add ginger, garlic, chilies and tomato to a food processor and blend into a smooth paste.

3. Add the puree to the pan and bring to a simmer. Add salt and deggi mirch and cook, while stirring occasionally to ensure the mixture does not burn. Cook for 5-10 minutes, or until mixture releases oil or appears dry.

4. Add tomato paste to the center of the pan and cook for about a minute. Stir the tomato paste into the masala and turn off the heat.

For the Dal Makhani

1. Add the cooked tadka to the Instant Pot with the cooked lentils and cooking water and mix well. Change the Instant Pot to Sauté mode on Low and bring lentils up to a simmer.

2. Crush the kasoori methi between your hands and add to the Instant Pot. Cook for 1-2 minutes.

3. Then, add in the butter, garam masala and mix well.

4. Gradually pour the cream and stir until you get a light brown color. (If you add too much cream, the dish will turn white, which won't look as appetizing and it will just be cream!). Simmer for 5-10 minutes or until the lentils thicken and coat the back of a spoon.

5. If the lentils become too thick, add water 1/4 cup at a time to adjust consistency. Once ready, you can leave the lentils in Keep Warm mode.

Enjoy the dal makhani with steamed rice, naan, or roti. Check out some of my recipes for rice and breads that go well with this delicious dal makhani:

• Homemade Tandoori Naan
• Rumali Roti Recipe - Soft and Thin "Handkerchief" Roti
• Classic Homestyle Roti/Chapati/Phulka
• Jeera Rice Pulao
• Plain Steamed Rice

For another rich North Indian legume, try my rajma masala.

What Dal Makhani Is Actually Made Of

The dal in question is urad dal — whole urad dal specifically, not the split white kind. In English it is sold as whole black lentils or black gram, and the distinction matters when you are shopping: split urad cooks to mush and will never give you the texture this dish is named for. Here it is 1/4 cup of it, soaked for 4 to 6 hours, alongside 2 tablespoons of red kidney beans. That second ingredient is not filler. The rajma bring a mealy softness against the lentils' firmer skins, and they are what makes each spoonful feel varied rather than uniform.

The word makhani means buttery in Hindi, and the dish comes from Punjab in northern India. That is the whole promise of it, and the ingredient list keeps faith with it: 1 tablespoon of butter in the tadka, 2 more tablespoons of unsalted butter stirred in at the end, and a cup of cream. It is a rich dish by design and there is no honest way to make it otherwise.

It is also worth noticing what is not in the list, because dal recipes are usually stuffed with ground spice and this one is not. There is no turmeric — the color comes from deggi mirch and tomato instead. There is no coriander powder and no cumin powder either; the cumin is whole cumin seeds bloomed in fat at the start of the tadka, which gives a nuttier, more aromatic result than the powder would. The whole spices are just a bay leaf and a one inch cinnamon stick, cooked with the lentils and doing their work quietly in the background. The depth of flavor here comes from technique and long cooking rather than from a long spice list.

The Instant Pot Timings, and What They Replace

Traditional dal makhani is a slow-cooking dish in the most literal sense — the lentils sit over low heat for hours, sometimes overnight, which is how the starch breaks down enough to thicken the dal without any cream at all. On the stove that is most of a day of attention. The Instant Pot compresses it honestly: the lentils and kidney beans go in with 3 to 4 cups of water, the valve goes to Sealing, and the Bean/Chili setting runs for 45 minutes, followed by a natural pressure release of 15 to 20 minutes. That release is part of the cooking time, not dead time — the lentils keep softening as the pressure falls, and venting early gives you firmer skins.

Two details are easy to miss. Do not drain the lentils when they are done: that cloudy cooking water is full of released starch and it is what gives the finished dal its body. And mash them lightly with the back of a serving spoon rather than blending — you want some broken down to thicken the dal and some left whole for texture. A 6 quart Instant Pot is the size this quantity is written for and it leaves plenty of headroom; lentils foam, so never fill past the halfway mark whatever size you own.

The tadka is made separately in a pan while that happens, and it is where the flavor is built. Cumin seeds and a pinch of hing go into hot butter until the seeds turn reddish brown and smell toasted. The ginger, garlic, green chilies and tomato are blended to a smooth paste first — effectively a fresh ginger-garlic paste with the tomato already in it — then simmered with salt and deggi mirch for 5 to 10 minutes until the mixture releases oil at the edges or looks dry. That visual cue is the one to wait for; it means the raw edge has cooked off. The tablespoon of tomato paste goes into the center of the pan for a minute at the end to concentrate it further.

Everything then goes back into the pot on Sauté Low to simmer together. Crush the kasoori methi between your palms before adding it — those dried fenugreek leaves are what make the dish taste like a restaurant made it, and crushing releases the aroma. Give it 1 to 2 minutes, then finish with the butter and 1/2 teaspoon of garam masala off the boil.

Cream, Heat and What a Serving Comes To

The recipe calls for 1 cup of half and half cream at 10%, not heavy cream, and that is a deliberate choice rather than a compromise. A lighter cream lets you loosen the dal to the consistency you want without it turning claggy, and it keeps the color a warm reddish brown rather than dulling it to beige. If heavy cream is what you have, use less of it and add a splash of the lentil water to make up the volume — you will get a creamy texture either way.

For heat, deggi mirch is doing the work of red chili powder here, and it is a mild blend chosen mostly for color. If you only have cayenne pepper, use roughly half as much, because it is considerably hotter and contributes far less color. The 2 to 3 green chilies are marked optional and get blended into the paste, so they spread heat evenly through the dish rather than turning up in bites.