A woman in a rustic kitchen smiles while holding a steaming ceramic bowl filled with brown vegetable stock soup, featuring root vegetables, white beans, and fresh parsley.

Brown Vegetable Stock

There’s something incredibly comforting about the smell of a homemade broth simmering on the stove, filling the entire kitchen with warmth. This isn’t your average clear broth, though—my Brown Vegetable Stock gets its deep, complex flavor from slowly caramelized root…

A woman in a cozy sweater holding a steaming ceramic bowl filled with homemade Root Vegetable Stock, with a stockpot and chopped carrots, celery, and turnips on a cutting board in the background.

Root Vegetable Stock

There is something incredibly grounding about simmering a pot of homemade Root Vegetable Stock on a quiet afternoon. It’s one of those kitchen staples that instantly elevates any soup or stew, adding a depth of flavor you simply can’t get from a store-bought carton. I…

Curried Whole Brown Chickpeas CHOLE

Curried Whole Brown Chickpeas CHOLE

This dish features a small, dark brown chickpea called kala chana dal . Generally, it is hard to find, stocked only by Indian or Middle Eastern grocery stores, so it’s a good idea to buy a few pounds at a time and keep it on hand for variety in your dal cooking….

Mung Beans with Panir Cheese PANIR SABAT MOONG

Mung Beans with Panir Cheese PANIR SABAT MOONG

This earthy, high-protein bean dish, typical in the Punjab, is ideal for the cold winter months, and can be the main attraction of lunch. Although it goes well with hot rice, I especially recommend it with hot flatbreads, perhaps Griddle-Baked Paper-Thin Whole Wheat…

Sweet ‘n’ Sour Dal Soup with Mixed Vegetables SAMBAR

Sweet ‘n’ Sour Dal Soup with Mixed Vegetables SAMBAR

In South India, sambar is always made with toovar dal but it can be combined with almost any vegetable. Besides the green beans, carrots and eggplant suggested in this recipe, you could try broad beans, radishes, fennel root, kohlrabi, parsnip, cauliflower, summer or…

Toovar Dal with Chopped Spinach TOOVAR PALAK DAL

Toovar Dal with Chopped Spinach TOOVAR PALAK DAL

As opposed to thinnish dal soup, this dish is “dry” and “textured”: each bit of dal stands tender yet plump, separate from the others. To achieve this, the dal is cooked in a small quantity of water until it is soft but not broken down. This…

Hearty Five – Dal Soup PANCH DAL SHORBA

Hearty Five – Dal Soup PANCH DAL SHORBA

Here is a hearty, wholesome, thick dal soup. Although the cooking time is long, this recipe is by no means laborious, and the delicious result is well worth the time. Some of the spices and seasonings are cooked along with the dals to allow their qualities to permeate…

Three – Dai Delight MOONG URAD TOOVAR DAL

Three – Dai Delight MOONG URAD TOOVAR DAL

As vegetarian cooking increases in popularity, so will the use of dals , since they are cheap and high in protein. As people begin to explore the world of dals , they will find that each variety has its own taste, texture and appearance, creating a tremendous range of…

Herbed Split Pea Soup with Apple and Coconut MASALA MATAR DAL

Herbed Split Pea Soup with Apple and Coconut MASALA MATAR DAL

Split peas are economical and require no sorting or washing. In this unusual dish, the flavors of the split peas, apples, coconut, spices and seasonings intermingle through very slow cooking. The result is a zesty, naturally sweet soup that’s very satisfying on…