Making Rajma — With Pressure🔥💨
Wikipedia calls it, “… kidney beans in a thick gravy with many Indian whole spices.”
Rajma is the Entrée Royale of North Indian entrées and curries. It is typically reserved for grand occasions (like weddings, or that rare Sunday lunch when you are feeling particularly fancy).
Mom tricked me into thinking that this is a super easy dish to prepare — I was gullible. I am glad she did though, because rajma is a real people pleaser when we invite folks for lunch or dinner.
It is a great source of protein if you are on a vegan/vegetarian diet, and goes well with rice or chapatis. I personally love having it as-is, since it is so filling.
With those preliminaries out of the way, let me dive in.
Equipment you will need:
- a large bowl (to soak the rajma/kidney beans in);
- a pressure cooker;
- a sauce pan, to prepare the spicy tomato gravy; and
- a knife and a cutting board.
Ingredients you will need:
- Rajma or Kindney Beans (1 cup of Rajma can feed two people)
- Tomatoes (about 4–5)
- Ginger slices, grated or powder (I prefer powder)
- Garlic crushed or powder (again, I prefer powder)
- Red Chili powder
- Turmeric powder
- Salt
- Olive oil
- Mustard seeds
- Cumin (optional)
High-level Overview
The dish involves a multi-stage recipe — including a 6 hour soak, a pressure cooker, and preparing a spicy tomato gravy:
- Soak the rajma for 6 hours (this helps with the actual cook).
- Pressure cook the soaked rajma for about 4–5 whistles of the cooker.
- Prepare the spicy tomato gravy (ideally while the rajma is getting pressure cooked).
- Finally, combine the tomato gravy and the pressure cooked rajma, and pressure cook it again for about 2 whistles of the pressure cooker.
Let me break down further.
Stage ⓵: The 6 hour Soak
Rajma is a hard bean. So cooking it well is important if you do not want a tummy ache. The single best way to soften up that bean — to aid the final cook — is to soak it in water for about 4–6 hours (ideally 6 hours).
Take a big bowl, throw in the rajama (after cleaning the beans) and then add some water to it. For 1 cup of rajma I add about 3–4 cups of water. You want to be generous with the water because as the beans soak in the water, they expand in size. When they expand in size the rajma beans start peeking out of the water. This may cause the rajma at the top to soak limited water, compared to the beans at the bottom of the bowl.
Here is what the rajma looks like at the start and end of a 6 hour soak:
Stage ⓵ (alt.): 2 hour soak + preliminary pressure cooker round
Do not have 6 hours to spare for the soak? No issue.
Spare at least 2 hours for soaking the rajma. This means that if you want to have Rajma for dinner tonight, start the soak at about 4pm. Then follow that 2 hour soak with a 20 minute (preliminary) round of the pressure cooker:
- Transfer the 2-hour soaked rajma in the pressure cooker;
- add some water, close the pressure cooker’s lid and whistle;
- set the stove to medium heat.
- In about 20 minutes you should be able to go through at least 2 whistles of the cooker. Often, I let it run for 4 good whistles.
Stage ⓶: The Pressure Cooker
Once you have the soaked rajma (via the 6hour soak), take out the pressure cooker and transfer the soaked rajma into the cooker. If you used the 2hour soak, then just open up the cooker’s lid after the preliminary round of the pressure cooker. After that:
- Make sure that you have about 3–4 cups of water for every cup of rajma in the pressure cooker.
- To this add the following spices: Ginger (powder/grated/slices), Garlic (crushed/powder), Salt and Red Chili powder.
- It is important for the garlic and ginger to cook with the rajma — the rajma will soak up those flavors nicely in the pressure cooker; otherwise, the flavors stay with the gravy alone. (NOTE: you will add these spices to the tomato gravy as well, so go easy at this stage with the spices.)
- Put on the cooker’s lid and whistle; and turn up the heat on the stove to medium. Wait for about 4 whistles of the cooker.
- After 4 whistles of the cooker, turn off the stove and let the cooker sit for a while. All that built-up steam will continue to cook and flavor the rajma beans.
- Once enough time has passed (for the steam to fizzle out of the cooker) open up the cooker and taste the rajma beans to see if they have cooked. The beans should be soft and almost mushy by now — a good indication! Also: overcooking the beans is not a deal breaker, at least for me.
Stage ⓷: Spicy Tomato Gravy
Preparing the gravy is relatively easy, and I do this while the rajma is cooking under all that pressure of “Stage ⓶”. But there is no harm in taking things one stage/step at a time. Here’s how I make the gravy:
- I wash and cut about 4–5 tomatos. I cut each tomato into 8-12 blocks/chunks, i.e., never too fine. Tomatoes are full of water, and cutting them in big blocks retains some of that water in the tomato. Otherwise, all those natural tomato juices are wasted, and you need to add additional water to the sauce pan when preparing the gravy.
- Next, I take a sauce pan, and splash in some olive oil. To the oil I add some mustard seeds and cumin, and turn up the heat to high on the stove.
- As the mustard seeds start crackling, I throw in the tomato pieces (with all that water) and toss them around in the pan with a spatula.
- I then quickly turn the heat down to low-medium, and close the lid to trap the evaporating water from the tomatoes.
- Next, I reassemble my spices and start adding them to the tomatoes in the sauce — a dash of Ginger and Garlic, Red Chili Powder, Turmeric and Salt. I mix up the spices with the tomatoes with the spatula, and close the lid.
- Now, I will wait for the tomatoes to burst from the heat. I routinely keep checking the tomatoes, and the water levels in the sauce pan. More often, I will just loose patience after 15 minutes and start squashing the tomatoes myself.
- Small tomato chunks in the gravy is fine for me. I am not looking for a smooth finish in the gravy. Moreover, the tomatoes will cook even more in the final round of the pressure cooker.
The whole cook for the gravy should take about 15–20 mins.
Stage ⓸: Pressure Cooker, one more time
In this final round, you add the tomato gravy into the pressure cooker (which is already full of the cooked rajma). The tomatoes and the rajma will have a chance to meld into one coherent dish.
Same deal as before: put on the cooker’s lid and whistle; set the heat to medium-to-high on the stove; and wait for at least 2 whistles of the cooker.
After the 2 whistles of the cooker, I typically turn off the heat and let the cooker sit for 5 minutes with all that buit-up steam. After 5 minutes, I carefully let out any excess steam, open the cooker, and give it a whirl.
It ready! 🥘
At this point, the rajma would be sitting in a flavorful, tomato gravy. Transfer it to a serving dish. Or do what I do: serve it straight out of the cooker — it retains its heat♨️ in the cooker.
Bon Appétit!
