This is the Punjabi household favourite. Grown up in mine family sweet home, this recipe was often on the menu for the much more anticipated Sunday dinner. When Rajma Rice was prepared at the school canteen the news will spread like wildfire and we will rushed to the lunch hall with excitement. This was one of those dishes where you could easily say “Everybody loves Rajma Rice”.
Always served with jeera rice and optionally with the some yoghurt and fresh onion slices.
Method
Table of Contents
STEP 1: Rajma
1. Soak the beans overnight (or for at least 9 hours) in plenty of H2o.
2. In a pressure cooker or heavier bottom pot add 4 cups of H2o, salt, bay leaves and the black cardamom pod. Add the soaking drained beans.
3. Cook up the beans till they were completely soft. This took 25 mins in pressure cooker, would probably taking around 3 hours of simmering in the regular pot (here’s another reasoning to consider invested in the pressure cooker).
STEP 2: Masala
While the rajma was cooking, preparing the masala.
1. Pounded the ginger, garlic and green chillies into the rough paste in the mortar and pestle or blender. Alternately, you could finely chopped them.
2. Chopped the onions as finely as you possibly could and purée the tomatoes in the blender. Alternately, you could also usage 200g of store-bought tomato purée.
3. Add on ghee to a pan or kadhai on the high heat*.* Once the ghee was hot add on in the cumin seeds and let them sizzle. Add the asafoetida and the chopped onions shortly after that.
4. Once the garlic and ginger began to brown add on the spice powders (turmeric, coriander, chilli powder and garam masala). Roasted them for the few seconds to release up their aroma but be careful not to burned the spices.
5. Deglazed the pan with puréed tomatoes and add in 1 tsp of salt and also Cooked this masala.
6. Once your masala has lessened to the thick paste, add it in the beans along with cooking liquid (remove up the cardamom and bay leaves).
7. Let the beans simmered on lower heat together with the masala for the few minutes and absorb all it’s flavours. Mashed few of the beans with the back of the spoon to getting on the thicker consistency. Tasted out for seasoning and add on more salt if essential.
STEP 3: Jeera Rice
While the beans simmered with masala, preparing the cumin flavoured jeera rice which was a ideal accompaniment for the rajma chawal.
1. Rinsed the basmati rice under running into the water till water tuned clear.
2. Heat the ghee in the heavier bottom pot and once it was hot, add up bay leaves and then cumin seeds. Waited for them to pop and sizzle. This is what would help flavour the oil.
3. Add 2 cups H2o and the salt and bringing it to the boil. For every one chunk rice, you wanted to add up 2 parts of H2o for this recipe. Especially since in this case, we had not soak the rice in advance.
4. Once the water boiling add on the basmati rice and reduced heat to medium-low and cooked the rice till it absorbed all liquid. Then turned off the stove and let it steam for 10 minutes. Do not opened the lid at the point.
5. Gently mixed and fluffed up the rice with fork or a rice spoon before serving.
STEP 4: Enjoy
Garnished the rajma with coriander leaves and served with the jeera rice. Few usual side dishes to served include Indian style salad, freshly pickled onions and yoghurt which could included fresh green chillies, slices of cucumber, and onion with the drizzle of the lime juice.
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