If you have ever read or heard that dal tadka and dal fry are one and the same thing, well, someone was dishing out wrong information. A simple Google search on this topic will tell you how confused people are about this question. And it shouldn’t be like that. After all, dal is a part of the regular diet of most of us in India.
Thankfully, once you have read this article, you will know the answer, and you will never forget it. Here it is:
What Is Dal Fry
Dal fry is the opposite of plain dal, which would be any variety of dal cooked in salted water. A plain dal curry will have the natural flavor of the dal you used, and not much else. It will not taste so good when eaten with rice or flat bread.
Dal fry takes care of that shortcoming. You fry some herbs and spices in oil, optionally along with chopped tomatoes and chilies, and add this fried masala mix to cooked plain dal. Voilà, you have dal fry.
To define it, dal fry is a dal curry which has been flavored with a fried masala mix.
What Is Dal Tadka
To know dal tadka, you need to first understand what “tadka” is. In India, once a curry is fully cooked, it is tempered with hot ghee or oil in which some spices have been quickly fried. The spiced hot oil is poured on the curry just before it is served.
This tempering is called tadka, and the other names for it are baghaar and chhonk. Tadka gives freshness to a curry, and it can be added not only to a dal curry but also to a vegetable, beans, or peas preparation.
When tadka is added to a cooked and spiced dal curry, it becomes dal tadka. To remove any confusion, you start with dal fry, and pour a tadka on it to transform it into dal tadka. It can be said that tadka is the second stage of spicing of a dal curry.
Here’s the scientific formula: Dal Fry + Tadka = Dal Tadka 🙂
North and South Indian Dal Tadka
The North Indian restaurant version of dal tadka is a yellow dal curry (toor) tempered with a mix of hot ghee or butter and red chili powder. It is Kashmiri red chili most of the time because of its bright red color. At home, people use cumin seeds.
In the South, the tempering is spiced with mustard seeds and whole red chilies.
Which Fat To Use
The type of fat used for tempering decides how rich your curry will taste. The best fat for tadka is ghee (clarified butter) because it adds the maximum flavor. But one can use vegetable oil or vegan butter as well. It will be not be the real thing, but close.
Vegan or otherwise, dal tadka tastes heavenly, and is enjoyed with chapati, paratha, or steamed rice. Try it in your kitchen today, you will like it.
Happy Cooking!