Kulth is one of those ingredients that is completely ordinary in a hill kitchen and almost unknown in a city one. It is hard, dark, and takes twice as long to cook as any dal you are used to. It also makes one of the best winter meals in the region, and it is worth the trouble at least once.
What kulth is
Kulth is horse gram — a small, dense, dark pulse also called kulthi, hurali or muthira depending on where you are in India. In Himachal it is grown on the drier terraces where richer pulses would not manage.
It is genuinely tough. The seed coat is hard, which is exactly why it stores so well and why it needs the soaking time it does.
What it tastes like
Deeply savoury and earthy, quite unlike toor or moong. Cooked properly it makes a thick, almost gravy-like dal that coats rice rather than running off it.
It is heavy food, and deliberately so. This is what gets eaten through the coldest part of winter, when a light dal would not do the job.
How to cook it
The only real difficulty is patience at the start.
- Soak overnight, minimum. Eight hours is the floor, twelve is better. Kulth is harder than any dal you have soaked before and skipping this does not work.
- Pressure cook long. Six to eight whistles, then let the pressure drop naturally. Test before you season — undercooked kulth is unpleasant.
- Temper properly. Ghee, garlic, and jakhiya if you can get it. In the hills this tempering is not optional; it is what makes the dish.
- Do not thin it. Kulth dal is meant to be thick. Resist adding water at the end.
Why cities stopped eating it
Convenience, mostly. Kulth takes planning that other dals do not, and as faster-cooking pulses became cheap and available everywhere, the ones that required a full day of forethought fell away.
It is also strongly associated with rural food in a way that worked against it for a while. That is beginning to change, though slowly.
On the health claims
Horse gram attracts a lot of claims, particularly around weight loss and kidney stones, and some of them are repeated confidently well beyond what the evidence supports.
What is straightforwardly true is that it is a pulse, so it is a source of plant protein and dietary fibre like other pulses. We will leave it there.
Kulth / Horse Gram Dal
Grown on the drier terraces of Upper Shimla, cleaned by hand.
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