Madhur Jaffrey Instant Pot Simple Mung Dal with Spinach – and a Note on Cinnamon

Madhur Jaffrey's been a major influence on my cooking of late, as highlighted by yesterday's curtido post.  A major reason for her resurgence in my kitchen is her new Instant Pot cookbook, which I picked up from the library before it closed (and now have no way of returning!).  

My first new cookbook recipe attempt was a modified version of her Mung Dal with Spinach.  It was modified in the sense that I didn't have the right proportion of spinach available, so I halved the recipe entirely with even slightly less spinach.

I learned a lot about Instant Pot dal cooking by attempting this recipe.  First, 10 minutes on low pressure is a perfect cook time for split mung dal, a dal that I had previously completely overcooked in the Instant Pot.  

Second, the 3.5-to-1 water-to-dal ratio was a bit too high, which I ended up taking care of by sautéing the dal for a bit longer with the tadka.  

The third and most important takeaway is that we really don't like cinnamon in dal.  In this simple recipe with ginger, garlic, and spinach, the half cinnamon stick cooked with the dal produced way too much of a deep cinnamon flavor.  While that flavor faded over the coming day, it still was a great lesson learned for us to omit cinnamon in these simple dals moving forward.