Chana Masala (full version)
Servings: 3–4 Prep: 10 min (plus overnight soak) · Cook: 30–45 min
Ingredients
• 1 cup dried chickpeas, soaked 6–8 hours (or 2 cans, drained)
• 1 tbsp oil
• 1 tsp cumin seeds
• 4–5 whole cloves
• ½ tsp carom seeds (ajwain)
• ½ tsp dried pomegranate seeds (anardana)
• 1 medium onion (~150 g), chopped
• Green chilies to taste, chopped
• Ginger-garlic paste, ~1 tbsp
• 1 tsp turmeric powder
• 1 tbsp coriander powder
• Red chili powder to taste
• 1 tbsp tomato paste (optional)
• 3 tomatoes (~290 g), pureed
• 1 cup water
• Aamchur (dried mango powder), ~½ tsp
• Salt
• Garam masala, to finish
• Fresh cilantro, chopped
Directions
1. Boil the soaked chickpeas in salted water 30–40 minutes until tender. Pressure cooker if you have one. Skip if using canned.
2. While they boil, heat oil in a pan. Add cumin, cloves, carom seeds, and pomegranate seeds. Warm one minute on medium.
3. Add onion and a pinch of salt. Sauté until translucent — the salt draws out moisture and speeds this up.
4. Add green chilies, sauté one minute.
5. Add ginger-garlic paste and sauté 4–5 minutes until the onions brown. When it sticks, splash in a little water and keep going.
6. Add turmeric, coriander powder, and chili powder. Toast a few seconds on low-medium only — spice powders burn fast and turn bitter.
7. Stir in tomato paste, cook one minute.
8. Add tomato puree and 1 cup water. Cook until oil floats on the surface. Test: on low heat, draw a clean stroke through the sauce with a spatula — no watery trail should follow, and oil should rise at the edges after a few seconds off heat.
9. Add aamchur and the boiled chickpeas. Stir, simmer one minute.
10. Taste, adjust salt. Finish with a sprinkle of garam masala and cilantro.
Notes
• Onion-to-tomato ratio for most Indian gravies is 1:2 by weight.
• Chopped tomatoes work instead of puree — add them at step 8 and cook 10–15 minutes until mushy.
• Butter is a fine substitute for ghee in everyday cooking.
• Don’t cook all the vegetables together; onions steam in tomato juice instead of caramelizing.
Beginner version — five spices
Same recipe exactly. Buy only these five and ignore the rest:
• Cumin seeds
• Turmeric powder
• Coriander powder
• Red chili powder
• Garam masala (store-bought is fine — buy small, keep it airtight, good 6+ months)
Skip the cloves, carom seeds, pomegranate seeds, and aamchur. Everything else — caramelize onions, toast the powders, tomato puree, cook until the oil floats, add chickpeas — stays the same.
There’s also a middle option in the video: grind all your whole spices into a single all-purpose mix (plus 2 tsp turmeric, 2 tsp aamchur, ½ tsp ground mace, ½ tsp grated nutmeg), then just use 2 tsp of that in place of the whole-spice step. Keeps a year airtight. He notes the exact whole-spice list is on-screen and in the video description rather than spoken aloud, so it isn’t in the captions.g