My parents-in-law have come to visit us for a bit – a common practice among spread out South Asian families. Growing up, my grandparents would come to stay for months, bringing gifts, stories, and culture. We found comfort and slowness in their presence, and I try to recreate the same with my in-laws – the homely, structured feel. Enter your email below and get it sent straight to your inbox. Plus, get recipes & tips every week! I make more of an effort around mealtimes, chopping up neglected vegetables, taking the rice out of the rice cooker, and sometimes, with the help of my mom-in-law, making two dishes for dinner (still don’t know how people do that every day). My mom-in-law teaches me things I wouldn’t think to Google, like how to cook ‘tinde’ (apple gourd) or determine if green chili peppers are dry enough for achaar. She’s swift in the kitchen – chopping everything directly into the pot, using the smallest pans possible, barely leaving any footprint or sign of effort. There are some dishes I’m determined to learn from her because her versions are simply the best – kadhi pakora, maash ki dal, and these ‘keema beans’ as she calls them. Of course, she makes this dish a little differently every time, but here’s my best recreation of it.
Some Keema Lobia tips:
In this recipe, the ginger is added at the end. If biting into julienned or chopped pieces of ginger bothers you, feel free to crush and add them in the beginning along with the garlic. You’ll notice this recipe has more oil, salt, and spice than usual. This is intentional and true to my mom-in-law’s homestyle Punjabi cooking. This recipe uses pre-cooked black-eyed peas. To cook 1 pound in the Instant Pot, first, soak them for 30 minutes and drain. Then pressure-cook the beans with 7 cups water on high setting for 20 minutes. Drain any excess water. You can also use 1 (15.8 oz) can of drained and rinsed blackeye peas. To keep the recipe extra easy, I use a food processor to chop onions, tomatoes, and garlic. Of course, you can manually chop these.
To Serve
Keema Lobia is wonderful with roti, but my in-laws grew up eating it with plain white basmati rice. It’s comforting either way. More Instant Pot recipes:
Instant Pot Butter Chicken Instant Pot Goat & Bell Pepper Curry Instant Pot Nihari Shami Kebab (w. Instant Pot Instructions)
For more ideas, check out my Instant Pot Pakistani Recipes Roundup!
