Sambar Recipe: Dal, Tamarind and the Order Vegetables Go In

Sambar is the dish that makes a South Indian meal a meal. It is a tamarind-soured lentil stew, thick with vegetables, and it appears at breakfast beside idli, at lunch over rice, and at dinner with dosa. There is no single correct version. What follows is the Tamil-style sambar I grew up with in Madurai, with notes on where the Udupi and Kerala versions diverge.

The three decisions that actually change the result are the dal, the tamarind, and whether you roast your own spice blend. Everything else is detail.

The Dal

Use toor dal (arhar, pigeon pea). It cooks to a soft, creamy purée that gives sambar its body. Masoor dal cooks faster but falls apart into something thinner and sweeter. Moong dal makes a lighter stew that is pleasant but is not sambar.

For four to six people, 3/4 cup of toor dal is right. Rinse it until the water runs mostly clear, then pressure-cook with 2 to 2.5 cups water, a pinch of turmeric and a few drops of oil (the oil stops it foaming over) for four to five whistles, or twenty minutes in a pot. It should be completely soft — mash it with the back of a ladle and it should give way without resistance. Undercooked dal is the most common reason a sambar tastes thin.

The Tamarind

Tamarind is what makes sambar sambar rather than dal. Use a lime-sized ball of wet tamarind soaked in a cup of hot water for fifteen minutes, then squeezed and strained. If you use concentrate, start with a heaped teaspoon and taste, because concentrates vary enormously in strength.

Get the quantity wrong in either direction and the dish fails in a recognisable way. Too little and it tastes flat and faintly sweet. Too much and it is puckering and metallic, and no amount of jaggery will fully rescue it. Add tamarind water in two stages, tasting after the first, and you will not overshoot.

Sambar Powder: Buy or Roast

Good shop-bought sambar powder makes a perfectly respectable sambar, and on a weeknight that is what most households use. Roasting your own is noticeably better and takes fifteen minutes. If you cook sambar more than occasionally, make a batch every couple of months.

For a small jar, dry-roast separately, each until fragrant and a shade darker: 1/4 cup coriander seeds, 2 tablespoons chana dal, 1 tablespoon toor dal, 1 teaspoon cumin, 1 teaspoon black peppercorns, 1/2 teaspoon fenugreek seeds, 10 to 12 dried red chillies, and a sprig of curry leaves. Cool completely, then grind fine with 1 teaspoon turmeric. Roasting each item separately matters because they brown at different rates; fenugreek in particular turns bitter fast.

The Vegetables, and the Order

Classic choices are drumstick, pumpkin, brinjal, okra, carrot, radish and small shallots. Shallots (sambar onions) are the one I would not skip; they turn sweet and hold their shape.

The order matters because the vegetables cook at different speeds, and a sambar where everything went in together is a sambar where the okra has dissolved and the drumstick is still woody. Working from a pot of simmering tamarind water:

1. First, the slow ones: drumstick, carrot, radish. Eight to ten minutes.
2. Then the medium: pumpkin, shallots, brinjal. Five to six minutes.
3. Last, the fragile: okra, tomato. Three minutes. Okra is better sautéed separately in a little oil first, which stops it going slimy in the pot.

Putting It Together

1. Simmer the strained tamarind water with turmeric, salt and 2 to 3 teaspoons of sambar powder for five minutes. This cooks out the raw edge of the tamarind and the powder. Do not skip it; sambar made by dumping powder in at the end tastes raw.
2. Add vegetables in the order above, cooking each stage until just tender.
3. Mash the cooked dal smooth and stir it in, with enough water to bring the stew to a pourable but not thin consistency. Simmer five minutes more. Add a small piece of jaggery, about a teaspoon, which rounds the sourness without making it sweet.
4. Take it off the heat and stir through chopped coriander.

The Tempering

The tempering (tadka) goes in at the very end and it is not a garnish — it is a third of the flavour. Heat 2 tablespoons of sesame oil or ghee until shimmering. Add 1 teaspoon mustard seeds and wait for them to pop properly. Then a pinch of fenugreek seeds, 2 dried red chillies broken in half, a generous sprig of curry leaves, and a pinch of asafoetida. The curry leaves should crackle for two or three seconds only. Pour the whole thing over the sambar and cover the pot for a minute to trap the aroma.

Regional Versions

Udupi sambar is sweeter and milder, and the spice blend is ground with fresh coconut, which makes it thicker and rounder. Kerala varutharacha sambar takes this further: the coconut is roasted until genuinely dark brown before grinding, giving a deep, almost nutty stew. Arachuvitta sambar, the Tamil festival version, grinds the spices fresh for that single pot rather than using stored powder, and it is worth doing once to taste the difference.

Troubleshooting

What to Serve It With

Over hot rice with a spoonful of ghee, it is lunch. Beside idli or dosa, it is breakfast. With medu vada dropped straight into the bowl, it is sambar vada. Make a coconut chutney alongside and you have the standard tiffin plate, and for the lighter counterpart at the end of a rice meal, see our rasam guide.