Instant Pot Gahat Phaanu | Horsegram Kale Stew | Garhwali Recipes

Today’s recipe is one of the traditional Garhwali cuisine recipes from Uttarakhand – It is the super healthy Gahat Phaanu or the Kulath phanu. Simply put, it is the horse gram lentil stew. I noticed different spellings for phanu. It is written as phanu, phaanu, phanoo. Phaanu is prepared by grinding lentils that are soaked overnight. Based on the lentil you add, it is named accordingly. Gahat is horse gram, and that’s what I am going to share today – Gahat ki Phaanu.

Uttarakhand or Uttaranchal is known for two popular cuisines – The Garhwali and the Kumaoni cuisine. I found a lot of interesting recipes, and in fact, it was challenging to pick one. What I found was, horse gram or Gahat is widely used in the Garhwali cuisine. Be it in dal, or stuffed paratha or this phaanu horse gram plays a significant role. As I was searching for the recipe, once again I landed upon this video. It’s the village-style Gahat phanu recipe. I was fascinated with that traditional method. The use of mortar pestle took me back to the Periyakulam days. (Ammi as we say in Tamil) I decided to go with that recipe and instead of mustard greens I used Kale.

I need to agree that I used a large quantity of kale for this proportion. It was slightly on the bitter side, and vaandu was not relishing much. I would recommend using either baby kale or go with 1.5 cups of chopped kale. I was planning to take a video of this recipe, but it didn’t work out as planned. Amidst that chaos, I missed few stepwise pictures. This is one keeper recipe for sure. I will update the pictures soon.

Here comes the traditional Garhwali Gahat ki Phanu.

Recap:

• Day 25 | 2015 – Dubai Trip
• Day 25| 2016 – Bombay Sandwich
• Today  –Instant Pot Kulath Phaanu | Horsegram Curry | Garhwali Recipes

Instant Pot Gahat Phaanu | Horsegram Kale Stew 

A popular Garhwali lentil recipe, Gahat ki Phanu prepared with horse gram and kale/mustard greens.

Ingredients:

• Kale – 3 cups tightly packed
• Green Onions – 4 (⅓) cup
• Tomatoes – 3
• Horse gram – ½ cup
• Garlic -1
• Oil – 1 tsp
• Cumin Seeds – 1 tsp
• Coriander powder – 1.5 tsp
• Red Chili powder – ¾ tsp
• Cilantro – ¼ cup
• Turmeric – ¼ tsp
• Water – 4 cups
• Salt – 1.5 tsp

Prep – Work:

• Soak the horse gram dal for at least 8 hours. I soaked it for about 10 hours.

• After 8 hours drain the water and grind it along with one garlic clove into a coarse paste by adding water. I used about ½ cup of water.
• Chop the kale, tomatoes, and green onions and set aside.

As this recipe doesn’t involve pressure cooking, I am going to combine the stovetop and instant pot method.

Stovetop & Instant Pot Method:

• If using IP, set it to sauté mode and add oil. If using the stovetop method, heat a heavy bottom vessel and add oil.

• When the oil is hot, add the cumin seeds. As it starts to splutter, add the tomatoes and cook for a minute.
• Then add the chopped kale, green onions, and all the dry masalas – turmeric powder, red chili powder, coriander powder, and salt too.
• Mix them all and cover and cook for 5 minutes. For my IP, I used the glass lid for the covering. You use the IP lid too and use steam mode. But I just went with the regular cover and cooking method.

• Once the kale has shrunken, add the ground horse gram dal paste and 2 cups of water.
• Mix them and let it simmer on low flame for 5 minutes. Make sure you stir the dal for every one minute to avoid the dal browning up.
• After 3 to 4 minutes, add the remaining water and cilantro. Bring it to one boil and turn of the heat.

• That’s it. Gahat ki phaanu is ready. Serve hot with rice.

Notes:

• The original recipe calls mustard greens. If you can source them, please go for that. Also as I mentioned above, if you are using kale, use about 1 to 1.5 cups.
• The dal thickens fast so cook over a low flame and add water according to your consistency preference. I used four cups of water totally for this. The dal was semi-thick.
• If you like garlic flavor, you can add three to five for this recipe.
• Adjust the salt and spice as per your preference.

📖 Recipe

Pin Recipe Print Recipe

5 from 1 vote

Instant Pot Gahat Phaanu | Horsegram Kale Stew | Garhwali Recipes

A popular Garhwali lentil recipe, Gahat ki Phanu prepared with horse gram and kale/mustard greens.

Prep Time8 hours hrs

Cook Time30 minutes mins

Total Time8 hours hrs 30 minutes mins

Course: Main Course, sides

Cuisine: Garhwali Cuisine,, Indian

Servings: 6

Calories: 97kcal

Author: Srividhya G

Equipment

• Instant Pot or Pressure Cooker

Ingredients

• ▢ 3 cups Kale tightly packed
• ▢ 4 Green Onions ⅓ cup
• ▢ 3 Tomatoes
• ▢ ½ cup Horse gram
• ▢ 1 Garlic
• ▢ 1 tsp Oil
• ▢ 1 tsp Cumin Seeds
• ▢ 1.5 tsp Coriander powder
• ▢ ¾ tsp Red Chili powder
• ▢ ¼ cup Cilantro
• ▢ ¼ tsp Turmeric
• ▢ 4 cups Water
• ▢ 1.5 tsp Salt

Instructions

Prep – Work

• Soak the horse gram dal for at least 8 hours. I soaked it for about 10 hours.
• After 8 hours drain the water and grind it along with one garlic clove into a coarse paste by adding water. I used about ½ cup of water.
• Chop the kale, tomatoes and green onions and set aside.
• As this recipe doesn’t involve pressure cooking, I am going to combine the stove top and instant pot method.

Stovetop & Instant Pot Method

• If using IP, set it to sauté mode and add oil. If using stove top method, heat a heavy bottom vessel and add oil.
• When the oil is hot, add the cumin seeds. As it starts to splutter, add the tomatoes and cook for a minute.
• Then add the chopped kale, green onions and all the dry masalas – turmeric powder, red chili powder, coriander powder and salt too.
• Mix them all and cover and cook for 5 minutes. For my IP, I used the glass lid for covering. You use the IP lid too and use steam mode. But I just went with regular cover and cooking method.
• Once the kale has shrunken, add the ground horse gram dal paste and 2 cups of water.
• Mix them and let it simmer on low flame for 5 minutes. Make sure you stir the dal for every one minute to avoid the dal browning up.
• After 3 to 4 minutes, add the remaining water and cilantro. Bring it to one boil and turn of the heat.
• That’s it. Gahat ki phaanu is ready. Serve hot with rice.

Notes

• The original recipe calls mustard greens. If you can source them, please go for that. Also as I mentioned above, if you are using kale, use about 1 to 1.5 cups.
• The dal thickens fast so cook over a low flame and add water according to your consistency preference. I used four cups of water totally for this. The dal was semi thick.
• If you like garlic flavor, you can add three to five for this recipe.
• Adjust the salt and spice as per your preference.

Nutrition

Calories: 97kcal | Carbohydrates: 16g | Protein: 6g | Fat: 1g | Saturated Fat: 1g | Sodium: 613mg | Potassium: 499mg | Fiber: 6g | Sugar: 2g | Vitamin A: 4058IU | Vitamin C: 51mg | Calcium: 79mg | Iron: 2mg

I am not a nutritionist. The nutritional information is provided as a courtesy and is an estimate only. It varies depending upon the product types or brands.

Tried this recipe?Mention @vidhyasvegetariankitchen or tag #vidhyasvegkitchen

For Video RecipesCheck out My YouTube Channel