Rajma curry
Preparation Time
15 minutes
Cooking Time
70 minutes
Difficulty Level
easy
Meal Type
Lunch
Serves 4
Key Ingredients
- Rajma (Kashmiri red kidney beans)
About This Recipe
Rajma curry is the North Indian curry of red kidney beans in a rich onion and tomato gravy; rajma masala and rajma dal are its other names, and over steamed rice it becomes rajma chawal. This page is the curry on its own, to sit over rice or beside roti.
The method follows the dhaba order of work: the masala is fried until the ghee separates, a ladleful of beans is mashed into the gravy for body, and a ghee and Kashmiri chilli tadka goes over the pot at the end. Small Kashmiri rajma turn creamy inside while keeping their shape; the rajma beans page covers the other types.
Short of time, there is a quick soak: pour boiling water over the beans, cover and leave them for about an hour, then cook exactly as below, keeping the cooker going 5 to 10 minutes longer on low before the first check. The doneness test never changes: the pot moves on only when each bean crushes easily between two fingers. The Dietary Guidelines for Indians note that boiling and pressure cooking destroy the enzyme inhibitors that would otherwise block digestion in pulses.
The finished curry is thick, deep red and mildly hot, with the kasuri methi adding a dry-leaf note at the end. Mustard oil or groundnut oil replaces the ghee spoon for spoon, and white kidney beans or chitra rajma stand in for Kashmiri. The rice to serve under it is the rajma chawal recipe.
Ingredient List
Serving Size:
1x
2x
3x
Rajma
- Rajma (Kashmiri red kidney beans) — 1 cup
- Water, for soaking — 4 cups
- Fresh water, for the pressure cooker — 3 cups
- Salt (1 tsp for the cooker, 1/2 tsp for the masala) — 1 1/2 tsp
Masala
- Ghee (1 tbsp for the masala, 1 tbsp for the tadka) — 2 tbsp
- Cumin Seeds — 1 tsp
- Onions, finely chopped — 2 medium
- Ginger-Garlic Paste — 1 tbsp
- Tomatoes, pureed — 3 medium
- Turmeric Powder — 1/2 tsp
- Coriander Powder — 2 tsp
- Kashmiri red chilli powder (1/2 tsp in the masala, 1/2 tsp in the tadka) — 1 tsp
- Kasuri methi (dried fenugreek leaves) — 1 tsp
- Coriander leaves, chopped — 2 tbsp
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Serving Suggestions
Serve over steamed basmati rice the dhaba way, with sliced raw onion, a lemon wedge and a green chilli on the side, or ladle it beside hot rotis. A bowl of curd or cucumber raita cools the plate. More ways with the beans are in the rajma recipe roundup. Leftovers hold for two days in the fridge; stir in a little water and reheat once.
Tips for Cooking Rajma curry
Soak the full 8 to 12 hours; a short soak leaves the beans hard at the centre and they cook unevenly. Test several beans, not one, and let each crush easily between two fingers before the masala begins. Keep the tomato puree out of the pressure cooker; the beans must be soft before any tomato reaches them. Fry the masala until the ghee separates at the edges, or the gravy keeps a raw taste.
Chef’s Note
Use beans from one pack so the whole batch softens together; a mix of old and new beans cooks unevenly. The Kashmiri rajma from COWBERRY is grown on hill farms in Himachal Pradesh and Jammu with cow-based farming, small and glossy, picked by hand at full maturity and never polished. A bowl of this curry holds 50 g of dry rajma and comes to about 224 kcal, 10.2 g protein and 9.1 g fibre.
Per serving (approx.): 224 kcal, protein 10 g, carbs 25 g, fat 8.7 g, fibre 9.1 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
Apr 10, 2026
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