Khichdi (Rice and Split Mung Dal Cooked to the Same Point)

Variations

• Bihari khichri: much looser, eaten on winter evenings. Take the water up to 1.4L and give it five minutes longer.
• Bengali bhog khichuri: temple and festival food. The dal is dry-roasted in a pan first for a nutty aroma, potato and cauliflower go in, and it is much thicker. Roasted dal takes a little longer, so start it five minutes ahead of the rice in step 2.
• With vegetables: carrot, peas or cauliflower part-way through step 3 — hard ones from the start, peas in the last five minutes.
• For fasting days: on Hindu fast days it is made with sago or barnyard millet instead of a grain. The dal's job disappears with it, so the starch has to make the body alone.
• With masoor dal: red lentils work and collapse faster still. The colour goes muddier and after twenty minutes nothing of them is left, so it reads as rice in a thickened liquid.

Tips

• The whole dish is decided when you buy the pulse. A pot with a grain and a pulse in it usually has to solve the fact that the two do not take the same time. Waakye states it plainly — "The beans take far longer than the rice, and unsoaked there is no way to make the timings meet" — so it soaks overnight. Afghan mantu takes the other answer and boils the pulse separately first ("Lentils cook in 20–25 minutes, so shorten step 1"). Khichdi does neither. Nothing is soaked, nothing is cooked ahead, and both go in together, because the pulse was chosen so that the clocks already match.
• Why they match is already written on Dal. That page puts it on the seed coat: "Masoor dal is sold skinned and split. So it needs no soak and cannot hold its shape — twenty minutes and it is gone" Khichdi's moong dal is sold in the same state. So what this dish adds is that fact applied to a pan that also has rice in it. Use whole green mung with the coat on and the dish does not work — the rice will be long gone while the pulse is still firm.
• The body comes from the dal, not from stirring. That is why step 3 says not to stir. The dal falls apart on its own and becomes the liquid, so there is nothing to work at; work at it and the rice breaks too and you have a different dish. Jeonbok-juk is that different dish, and it goes there deliberately: "the rice is soaked and then half-crushed, the water goes in at eight times its volume, and you stir until the swollen starch granules burst and disperse". Khichdi uses about four times the water and never touches the grains — the same axis, stopped a long way earlier.
• Salt goes in at the start. Both the rice and the dal have to be seasoned through, and salt added at the end sits on the outside. Waakye makes the same point for the same reason, and says to be generous because two ingredients have to take it.
• It keeps thickening as it cools. If it is right when the heat goes off, a spoon will stand in it at the table. Stop step 4 while it still looks slightly loose, and add water when you reheat.
• The tadka is made outside the pot and poured in. Put the spices in at the beginning and twenty-five minutes of simmering leaves no cumin aroma at all. Carrying over what opens in hot fat in the last thirty seconds is the entire point of the step (blooming spices).
• Reheat it with water. Cold, the starch will not give the water back and it sets into a block. A hundred millilitres in the pan over a low heat brings it back (reviving leftovers).