First thing you need to soak dried chickpeas, I have taken 250grams of chana which can make 4-6 servings.
Wash them thoroughly and soak them in water overnight or minimum 6 hours.
After soaking chickpeas will be puffed up like this and this reduces cooking time and proper cooking of chana masala.
Next discard the water in which chana is soaked, discarding this water will help to get rid of compounds that cause gas etc.
To pressure cook them first I add drained out chickpeas in water and then added in 3 cups of water. Make sure that chickpeas are covered nicely with water.
Now add about a teaspoon of salt, and a teabag. I like to use teabags made with cloth over the paper ones because of better quality.
Next pressure cook it for 20 minutes. After the first whistle reduce the heat to lowest and pressure cook it.
Now when chickpeas are cooking you can prepare masala for chana masala. First take 1 tablespoon oil in a pan and ½cup of onion paste, 1 teaspoon ginger garlic paste and fry the paste for few minutes till onion turn light brown.
Next add in the coriander powder, salt, Red chilli powder, turmeric powder, cumin powder, garam masala powder, kasuri methi.
Cook this masala or spice powders with oil for few minutes because cooking spices in oil before adding water helps to release the maximum flavours from spices.
After frying add in the fresh tomato puree. It’s homemade tomato puree with fresh tomatoes. I have shown my simple method to make it in other video I will leave a linking the description below. You can click that link and watch it if you are interested.
Now after mixing the puree nicely I am going to cook this for 5-6 minutes no need to cook this till oil release etc. Because we are going to simmer it and in that process
Tomatoes will cook properly while retaining the tangy taste. You do not even need to add any thing else like tamarind or mango powder.
Now add the boiled and drained out chickpeas and mix with Masala. Notice that boiling with teabag changes the color of chickpeas to brown.
Mix them well with onion and tomato mix and then add water in which chickpeas were cooked. Mix them well and cook them on slow for 20 minutes.
After simmering these chickpeas for 15-20 minutes these will look like this there is change in the colour.
Next step now is you need to make a tempering which will give it a smoky taste and authentic chana masala flavour.
In a small pan add one tablespoon ghee or oil and add a fat pinch of asafoetida, 3-4 green chillis whole and one heaping tablespoon of chana masala. Now immediately pour this tadka or tempting over cooked chana masala and mix them well.
Once again simmer it for 5-7 minutes and after that chana masala looks like this. Just look at the perfect creamy texture of slow cooked chana and it is smoky and spicy. As a suggested before you can serve these delicious chana masala with poori, bhatura, rice or any Bread of your choice.