Baking Soda in Daal and Chana: Softer Beans, Lost Vitamins
A pinch of baking soda (meetha soda) in chana or daal does make it soft faster. The price is real, though: soda breaks down thiamine (vitamin B1) in the pot, can turn the daal mushy and soapy, and doesn’t do anything useful for gas. Fresh stock, a proper soak and a pressure cooker get you most of the way without it.
In brief
- Does it soften? Yes, quickly, because it makes the water alkaline
- What you lose: much of the thiamine (B1), some colour and texture
- Taste risk: soapy, bitter or metallic if you overdo it
- Gas: no meaningful help; soaking and draining matter more
- If you must: 1/8 tsp per 250 g dry chana, in the soak, then rinse
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How baking soda softens daal and chana
Think of a chickpea as a bag of tiny cells glued together. The glue is pectin and hemicellulose (the plant’s structural gums). Plain water and heat dissolve that glue slowly, over an hour or more of simmering, but alkaline water dissolves it fast. Very fast.
Baking soda is sodium bicarbonate, and a pinch in water pushes it to the alkaline side. The glue gives way, the skins loosen, and the cells fall apart sooner. That’s why halwais and cholay sellers have used it for generations: it saves fuel and time when you’re cooking 10 kilos of kabuli chana before dawn.
It also pulls out calcium that hard water leaves behind in the skins, so it helps most in exactly the kitchens where daal refuses to cook. Worth knowing. It explains why the habit sticks so firmly in some cities and barely exists in others, where the tap water is soft and daal cooks happily in three whistles with nothing added at all.
What you lose: thiamine, texture and taste
Vitamin B1 (thiamine)
Pulses are one of the better everyday sources of thiamine, the B vitamin your body uses to turn food into energy. Thiamine is fragile. It already loses some to long cooking, and in alkaline water it breaks down much faster. Add soda to the cooking pot and a large share of the daal’s B1 simply doesn’t survive to the plate.
For someone eating a varied diet, one bowl won’t cause a deficiency. For a family where daal and roti carry most meals and soda goes into every pot, it’s a steady loss from the very food that should be supplying it.
Texture
Soda doesn’t stop at “soft”. Go past a pinch and chana skins slip off in the pot, the outer layer turns pasty while the centre is still whole, and a pot of masoor that should hold some shape goes straight to glue. Cholay lose their bite.
Taste and colour
Leftover soda tastes soapy, bitter or faintly metallic, and it can turn daal a duller, darker shade. It also adds sodium: a quarter teaspoon of soda carries roughly 300 mg, which matters for anyone watching salt for blood pressure or kidney reasons.
Soda saves you whistles. It spends vitamins to do it.
Myth: baking soda in daal stops gas
Repeated everywhere. Not true in any useful way.
The gas from pulses comes mostly from oligosaccharides (sugars our gut can’t digest, so bacteria in the large intestine ferment them). Soda doesn’t destroy those. What reduces them a bit is soaking for several hours, throwing away the soaking water, cooking thoroughly and skimming the foam. Eating pulses regularly helps too, since the gut tends to adjust over a few weeks. Hing and jeera in the tadka are the traditional additions, valued for taste and custom.
Better ways to soften chana and daal without soda
- Start fresh. Old pulses won’t soften whatever you do. Buy from a shop with quick turnover and use within about six months.
- Soak properly. Kabuli chana and rajma: 8 to 12 hours in plenty of water (4 cups per cup of chana). Chana daal: 1 to 2 hours. See our soaking time chart for the rest.
- Salt the soak. 1 level teaspoon of salt per litre softens skins in a similar way to soda, without harming thiamine. Drain and rinse.
- Use soft water if yours is hard. RO, filtered, or boiled, cooled and settled water.
- Pressure-cook. 1 cup soaked kabuli chana with 3 cups water: 5 to 6 whistles on high, then 10 to 15 minutes on low. Let the pressure drop on its own.
- Hold the tomato. Acid slows softening, so tomato, imli and amchur go in after the chana is soft.
Our step-by-step kabuli cholay recipe and chana daal guide use this method start to finish.
If you still want to use soda: a pinch, not a spoon
Sometimes you’re short on time or stuck with old stock. Fine. Keep it small and put it where it does least harm.
- Add 1/8 teaspoon (a small pinch) of soda to the soaking water for 250 g (about 1 and a quarter cups) of dry chana or rajma.
- Soak as usual, then drain and rinse twice. Most of the soda leaves with the water.
- Cook in fresh water with no more soda.
- If it tastes soapy, you used too much; a squeeze of lemon in the finished dish masks a little, but next time use less.
Soda in the soak costs less thiamine than soda boiled for an hour with the daal, because the heat plus alkali is what does most of the damage.
What about soda in saag and green vegetables?
Same trade. Soda keeps greens bright green, which is why some cooks add it to saag or boiled peas. It also destroys a good part of their vitamin C and turns them soft. Cooking greens quickly with the lid off keeps colour well enough without it. For the bigger picture on raw and cooked vegetables, see the Kitchen Science, Honestly hub.
You’re on a low-salt diet for high blood pressure, heart failure or kidney disease: soda is a hidden source of sodium, so ask your doctor before using it routinely. Store baking soda away from children, since a large amount swallowed can be harmful. And soda never replaces a hard boil for rajma and lobia; raw kidney beans still need at least 10 minutes at a full boil or proper pressure-cooking.
Baking soda in daal: questions people ask
Is baking soda in daal harmful?
A small pinch now and then isn’t harmful for most people, but it destroys much of the daal’s thiamine (vitamin B1) and adds sodium. Used every day, it’s a steady nutritional loss.
How much baking soda to add to chana?
No more than 1/8 teaspoon per 250 g of dry chana, in the soaking water, then rinse. More than that gives a soapy taste and mushy texture.
Does baking soda reduce gas from chana?
Not in any meaningful way. Soaking, discarding the soak water, cooking thoroughly and eating pulses regularly do more.
Why do cholay sellers add soda?
Speed and fuel. Soda softens big batches quickly, especially in hard water, and gives the very soft, creamy texture that customers at a morning cholay stall have come to expect from a plate of cholay with hot kulchay or puri.
Can chana soften without baking soda?
Yes. Fresh chana, an 8 to 12 hour salted soak, soft water and 5 to 6 whistles plus 10 to 15 minutes on low will do it.
Is meetha soda the same as baking soda?
Yes. Meetha soda, khane ka soda and baking soda are all the same white powder, sodium bicarbonate, whatever the packet or the shopkeeper happens to call it. Baking powder is a different product with added acid.
Does soda destroy protein in daal?
No. Protein survives. The main losses are thiamine and texture.
Is baking soda in daal safe during pregnancy?
An occasional pinch in food is fine, but if you have swelling, high blood pressure or have been told to limit salt, check with your doctor, since soda is a sodium source.
Can baking soda be used for rajma?
A small pinch in the soak is fine, but it doesn’t make rajma safe on its own. Rajma must still be boiled hard for at least 10 minutes or pressure-cooked.