First, a word on this dish
If you want chole that looks and tastes like the kind sold in Delhi, do not hunt for one secret spice, because the colour and depth come mostly from how you cook. There is a slow simmer, a masala made from whole spices you have toasted yourself, and very often a tea bag, or a cloth of tea leaves, dropped into the pot with the chickpeas. The tea stains them a deep brown and adds a faint bitterness that most eaters feel but cannot name. Chole is almost always served with bhature, although rice or plain bread works too, and it is filling enough to be the whole meal, not a side dish.
The story behind the dish
Chickpea dishes called chole are old across North India, but the dark, sour, heavily spiced chole bhature most people mean today belongs to Punjab and to the street food of Delhi after Partition. From the 1940s and 1950s, Punjabi migrants and refugees set up dhabas and roadside stalls throughout the city, and chole bhature became a defined, named dish. The tea-darkened method is usually credited to Punjabi home cooks and street sellers, not to any ancient technique, and it is one of the clearest regional signs that separates this chole from the chickpea curries of other parts of India.
The method, in order
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Prep
Soak overnight and simmer the chickpeas with tea
Cover the dried chickpeas with generous water and leave them overnight, 8 hours at the minimum. Drain, then cook in fresh water along with the tea bags and salt. A pressure cooker needs 20 to 25 minutes after it comes to pressure. In an open pot, count on 1 1/2 to 2 hours of steady simmering, adding water if the level drops. They are done when they are fully soft and clearly darkened by the tea. Remove the tea bags and keep the liquid.
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Cook
Sizzle the whole spices in fat
Warm the fat in a deep pan and drop in the cumin, bay leaf, crushed black cardamom and cinnamon. About half a minute of sizzling is enough, and you should smell them.
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Cook
Brown the onions, then cook the tomato
Add the onion and let it cook on medium heat, stirring now and then, for 10 to 12 minutes, until it is a rich brown. Rushing this is a mistake, since the long browning is a big part of chole's depth. Put in the ginger-garlic paste for a minute, then the tomato puree and green chilli, and keep cooking until you see oil at the edges, about 8 to 10 minutes.
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Cook
Add ground spices and the chickpeas
Add the ground coriander, chilli powder, turmeric and chole masala for about a minute. Then pour in the chickpeas and just enough of their liquid to make a thick gravy, and let it simmer without a lid for 20 to 25 minutes. A few chickpeas crushed against the pan will thicken the gravy on their own.
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Cook
Finish and check the seasoning
Stir in the amchur and adjust the salt. When it is ready, the chole is dark, strongly spiced, and thick enough to hang on to a piece of bhature without sliding off. If it still looks thin, simmer it a few minutes longer.
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Serve
Garnish and bring to the table
Scatter thin strips of fresh ginger and chopped coriander on top, and serve hot with bhature, rings of raw onion and a lemon wedge.
Ingredient stand-ins
Canned chickpeas save time, but tea will not darken them the way it does dried ones, and they end up softer and less distinct. Cook them in the masala with some tea-steeped water for 15 to 20 minutes instead of simmering from dry. Different brands of chole masala vary a lot in strength, so with an unfamiliar one, begin with less and taste as you go.
Making it milder or fiercer
Chole is traditionally quite hot. To tone it down, cut the red chilli powder and skip the slit green chillies, and let the chole masala and ground coriander supply flavour with less heat. To make it hotter, add chopped fresh chilli or a pinch more chilli powder near the end, not at the start, so you can taste before you commit. Remember that chole masala blends differ a lot in heat between brands, so with one you have not used before, add it in two rounds and taste between them.
The slip most cooks make
Onions cooked too briefly are the usual flaw: the gravy tastes thin and raw instead of deep. Brown them properly. People also leave out the tea, thinking it a nicety, but it adds much of the colour and a quiet depth, and one tea bag already makes a visible difference. Last, a gravy that is too runny will not cling to a torn piece of bhature, so keep simmering until it does.
Storing what is left
Fridge or counter: Refrigerated in a sealed container, chole is good for 4 days, and as with most bean curries it usually tastes better the day after. Freeze it for up to 2 months and thaw it in the refrigerator before warming.
Bringing it back to life: Use the stove, over medium-low heat, with a little water if the gravy has stiffened in the refrigerator. Stir now and then until it is hot throughout. For a single portion, a covered dish in the microwave works too.
Handle with care
In warm weather, if dried chickpeas are going to soak for longer than a few hours, soak them in the refrigerator so they do not sit at room temperature all that time. Cool cooked chole within about two hours before it goes into the refrigerator, and reheat it until it is steaming hot all the way through before you serve it, as with any bean dish you store and warm up again.
Sources worth opening
- Vir Sanghvi, writings on Delhi street food history, on the Partition-era development of chole bhature culture in Delhi.