Chickpea & Potato Curry

A creamy, satisfying curry featuring chickpeas, farm-fresh potatoes, and a spicy curry paste made of garlic, onion, and sambal oelek.

Tips and Tricks

Don’t rinse your beans!

This recipe relies on the aquafaba (or the liquid from the can) as a thickening agent and for the added liquid in the curry. Just throw in the beans along with the canned liquid.

If you’re using your own cooked chickpeas for this, add in 1 cups’ worth of the cooking liquid to compensate.

Sambal Oelek - what is it?

This recipe calls for something called ‘sambal oelek’, a southeast Asian spicy chili paste. The traditional paste is naturally vegan, but you may need to double check the label, as some use shrimp paste or fish sauce.

If you can, try to find Huy Fong, which is fully vegan.

If you can’t find it, you can substitute for another chili sauce, though the flavor profile will be slightly different.

What kind of coconut milk?

While regular coconut milk is likely fine for this recipe, I found it made the curry slightly too rich. That’s why I recommend lite coconut milk for this recipe.

Ingredients:

  • 1 onion, chopped

  • 5 cloves garlic, chopped

  • 3 tbsp sambal oelek (*see Tips & Tricks)

  • 3 tbsp lime juice, divided

  • vegetable oil

  • kosher salt

  • 2 15 oz. cans chickpeas, not drained (*see Tips & Tricks)

  • 1 lb. potatoes (Yokun gold or something similar), cut into 1/4” cubes

  • 1 14oz. can lite coconut milk

  • ¼ cup cilantro, for garnish (optional)

Directions:

Place your chopped onions, garlic, the sambal oelek, 2 tbsp of the lime juice, and 5 tbsp vegetable oil into a blender. Blend the mixture until fully puréed.

Heat a Dutch oven over medium heat. Hover your hand over the bottom to check when it’s hot. Then add the curry paste and stir gently for 5 minutes, or until some of the paste comes away from the pan.

Add the chickpeas and their liquid, the potatoes, the coconut milk, and 1 ½ tsp of kosher salt. The liquid should cover everything. If it doesn’t, take the can of coconut milk, add some water, mix it briefly, then add this to the Dutch oven.

Bring to a boil, then simmer for 20 minutes or so. Taste test here and adjust the salt as necessary.

Take off the heat, garnish with cilantro and serve with paratha or Basmati rice.

Enjoy!