Wash the rice and soak for 30 mins.
Add 1 ½ cups of water and pressure cook. Add a pinch of turmeric to the rice before pressure cooking.
If you don’t want to pressure cook. You can follow this. Boil 5 cups of water in a large vessel. Add the soaked rice to it and bring it to a boil. Keep checking the rice by pressing a grain every 5 mins.
Once you think, the rice is cooked till the required softness as per your taste, turn off the flame.
Drain the water by tying a muslin cloth to the neck of the vessel. This helps to drain all the water from the rice.
Transfer to a large mixing bowl or a vessel that will help you mix evenly and let it cool down.
I generally pressure cook the rice.
But this also tastes equally good. Elders in my family prefer making the rice for lemon rice this way.
Try the method whichever is convenient for you.
Keep the lemon juice ready. I had to take 4 large lemons to get ¼ cup of lemon juice. The number of lemons varies based on the juice that they contain. So just squeeze as many lemons that will give you ¼ cup of lemon juice.
In a Kadai, heat the oil.
Once the oil is hot, add the peanuts and fry till half done.
Then add split chana dal and urad dal and fry.
Once they start turning colour, add mustard seeds, green chillies, red chillies and sauté.
Add the curry leaves and fry till crisp.
Add asafoetida and turn off the flame.
Also add the remaining turmeric and mix well.
Now quickly transfer this tempering on to the cooled down rice.
Let it cool.
After cooling, sprinkle salt on the rice as per your taste.
Gently mix using hands. Do not crush the rice. Be careful while doing this.
After the tempering and salt are evenly mixed with the rice, add lemon juice.
Gently mix again. Make sure you mix it thoroughly but gently.
Once you mix it evenly, our lemon rice is ready to serve.