Chana dal upma
Preparation Time
10 minutes
Cooking Time
24 minutes
Difficulty Level
easy
Meal Type
Breakfast
Serves 4
Key Ingredients
- Chana dal (split bengal gram)
About This Recipe
In South India, soaked chana dal is a regular part of upma: a handful goes into the tempering of the everyday rava upma for crunch. This recipe turns that habit around and makes the chana dal the whole dish. The dal is soaked, ground coarse and steamed like a grain, so the upma comes out soft and separate, nutty from the dal, with the tempering and the vegetables doing the seasoning.
The method follows a broken-wheat upma: temper, fry the vegetables, add the ground dal and hot water, cover and steam. Two and a half cups of water to one cup of dal cooks the grains soft and dry, so there is no rava to soak up extra water and no fermenting to wait for. As a chana dal breakfast recipe it is ready in about 35 minutes once the dal has soaked.
Swap the carrot for peas, beans or capsicum, and leave out the chilli for children. The grind decides the texture: coarse gives a rice-like bite, fine gives a softer, stickier upma that clumps more easily. A squeeze of lemon at the table is the usual finish if you like it tart.
Ingredient List
Serving Size:
1x
2x
3x
Upma
- Chana dal (split bengal gram) — 1 cup
- Groundnut oil — 2 tbsp
- Black Mustard Seeds — 1 tsp
- Cumin Seeds — 1/2 tsp
- Curry Leaves — 1 sprig
- Onion, finely chopped — 1 piece
- Carrot, finely diced — 1 piece
- Green chilli, finely chopped — 2 pieces
- Ginger, finely chopped — 1 tsp
- Turmeric Powder — 1/2 tsp
- Salt — 1 tsp
- Hot water — 2 1/2 cups
- Fresh coriander leaves, chopped — 2 tbsp
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Serving Suggestions
Serve hot with coconut chutney, a spoon of curd or a wedge of lemon, and a cup of filter coffee or chai. It keeps up to two days in the fridge; loosen it with a splash of water and reheat in a pan. More dal dishes are in the chana dal recipes roundup.
Tips for Cooking Chana dal upma
The soak makes this fast: an hour in water and the ground dal steams soft in ten to twelve minutes. Grind without adding water, or the dal turns to paste. Keep the lid on until the water is gone, then fry the upma dry so the grains separate. Add the salt with the water; salt at the end sits on the surface.
Chef’s Note
Coarse grinding is the whole trick: the dal must steam like a grain, not cook like a paste. A bowl of this upma comes to about 236 kcal and 11 g of protein, with 7.9 g of fibre, counted from the dal, the oil and the spices; the vegetables come on top of that.
Per serving (approx.): 236 kcal, protein 11 g, carbs 24 g, fat 10 g, fibre 7.9 g. Computed from IFCT 2017 / USDA values for the listed quantities. Measures: 1 cup = 240 ml, 1 tbsp = 15 ml, 1 tsp = 5 ml.
Happy Cooking
!!
ByCOWBERRY
Jun 21, 2026
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Difficulty Level
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