Beetroot Dahl

Chef: Alison From: India Serves: 4
Time: 20 minutes

Ingredients

• 500g beetroot, boiled in their skin until you can slide a knife through them, then peeled and diced. You can do this in advance or on the day you are cooking. The beets should take around 45 minutes to cook

• 300g red lentils, rinsed under cold water

• 2 tablespoons of oil, such as coconut or olive oil

• 6 cloves of garlic, finely chopped

• 2 inches of fresh ginger, grated.

• 1 green chilli finely chopped (leave out if you don’t like heat)

• 1 dessert spoon mustard seeds

• 2 cardamom pods- or 1 teaspoon of ground cardamom

• 1 tablespoon ground cumin seeds

• 1 dessertspoon ground coriander seeds

• 1 400 ml tin of coconut milk

• Salt and pepper

• 1 bunch of coriander- finely chopped

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There were many requests for this beetroot dahl recipe made by Alison, one of our chefs at the Healthy Living Kitchen.

This recipe makes for a vibrant and nutritious meal. The brilliant thing about it is that it’s very versatile. You can use different types of vegetables and lentils, this recipe uses red lentils as they are popular and the quickest to cook. When we made this in our kitchen we used  3 types – red lentil, mung beans and yellow moong dahl.  For this recipe we kept it to one for the sake of simplicity, however you can experiment with this (bear in mind you may need to increase the cooking time depending on what other lentils you use). Serve with rice and some greens or salad.

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Method 

1. Boil the rinsed lentils in a saucepan containing 1.2 litres of cold water until the lentils are soft – about 15- 20 minutes. Drain and set to one side.

2. Gently heat the oil in a deep pot, add the mustard seeds, garlic ginger, chilli and stir until the mustard seeds pop. Be careful not to burn anything. This process should only take a couple of minutes

3. Add the cardamom, cumin and coriander- stir, this mixture will start to smell really nice. Add the cooked lentils, a pinch of salt and pepper and stir to mix everything together

4. Add the chopped cooked beetroot

5. Add the coconut milk and 200 millilitres of water, stir and cook for a further 10 minutes on a low heat stirring as you go.

6. Remove from the heat. Add the chopped coriander

   
   Serve!