Panchmel Dal: Five Lentils, Jaggery and Ghee

Panchmel dal is a Rajasthani dish of five lentils cooked together, the dal of dal baati. Marwari Jain families have long cooked it without onion or garlic, using asafoetida, cloves, ghee and a little jaggery. It is a good dish for a large table, and a good page for explaining the sweetening rule: why Jain kitchens use jaggery and sugar but never honey.

Serves: 4 to 6. Time: 1 hour including soaking.

Ingredients

• 1/4 cup each: toor dal, chana dal, moong dal (split, washed), masoor dal and urad dal (split, skinned)
• 5 cups water
• 1/2 teaspoon turmeric
• 1 teaspoon dry ginger powder
• 1 teaspoon red chilli powder
• 1 tablespoon jaggery
• 1 tablespoon tamarind pulp or dry mango powder
• Salt to taste

For the tempering

• 3 tablespoons ghee
• 1 teaspoon cumin seeds
• A pinch of asafoetida
• 4 cloves
• 1 small cinnamon stick
• 2 dried red chillies
• 1 teaspoon coriander powder
• Chopped coriander leaves

Method

1. Rinse the five lentils together and soak for 30 minutes. Drain.
2. Pressure cook with the water, turmeric and dry ginger for five or six whistles, until completely soft. Whisk to a creamy texture and loosen with hot water.
3. Return to the heat and add the chilli powder, jaggery, tamarind or amchur and salt. Simmer for 10 minutes so the flavours join.
4. For the tempering, heat the ghee in a small pan. Add cumin, then asafoetida, cloves, cinnamon and the dried chillies. When the cumin darkens, add the coriander powder and pour at once over the dal.
5. Cover for a minute to hold the aroma, then finish with coriander.

Why it follows the rules

Jaggery, never honey. Sweetness in a Jain kitchen comes from jaggery, sugar or fruit. Honey is set aside for two reasons that the tradition gives together. First, it is made by bees and taken from the hive, and the gathering of it harms the colony and its young. Second, honey is held to be a place where very small beings live, and so it counts as food drawn from the destruction of many lives. Because honey is easy to leave out and easy to replace, the rule is among the least contested of the food rules.

Five lentils are cooked, not sprouted. Jain practice is wary of sprouting, because a sprouting seed begins a new life. Here the grains are soaked briefly and cooked to softness, so nothing is left to sprout.

Cooked ghee and no stale butter. Ghee is clarified butter and keeps well, which is why it is the cooking fat of choice. Fresh butter that has stood for days is treated with more care, since the tradition is wary of dairy that has begun to turn.

Dry ginger and cloves. The warmth that fresh ginger and garlic would give comes from cloves, cinnamon and dry ginger. The rules about roots are explained on the lauki sabzi page.

Serving

The classic company is baati, a hard, ghee-soaked wheat ball, and churma, a sweet crumble of crushed baati, ghee and jaggery. A simpler table is plain rice or phulka. The dal is meant to be eaten hot and to be finished in the same meal.

Variations

• Three lentil version: use toor, moong and masoor in equal parts if you want a quicker dish.
• No jaggery: leave it out for a sharper, tangier dal.
• Lighter tempering: use one tablespoon of ghee for everyday meals and keep the full amount for guests.

Related

• Jain recipes: the rules and the dishes
• Dal dhokli
• Suji sheera
• Ranakpur: the temple of a thousand pillars
• Paryushan fasting

Frequently asked questions