Chickpea Curry with Coconut Milk and Tomato (Vegan)

This chickpea curry may be vegan, but even meat lovers will love it for its heartiness and flavor. There are so many reasons to eat more plants and many people have been opting to eat a plant-based diet for a few reasons – health, environmental, and cost.

Chickpeas are a healthy, CHEAP plant-based protein that are a crowd pleaser. My kids ate this up so fast! The flavors in this chickpea curry work so well together, with the unique spice blend that includes cinnamon, and slightly caramelized onions and garlic that lend sweetness to the whole thing.

And I love that the bulk of this recipe uses pantry ingredients – a can of chickpeas, a can of diced tomatoes, a can of coconut milk, and rice for serving if you want.

Don’t skip adding fresh lime juice at the end – it adds a little something something that you’re going to love! Let’s get to it.

Ingredients and Substitutions

• Chickpeas – I used canned, but you can cook your own from dry if you want (here’s how to cook dried chickpeas).
• Diced tomatoes – I used canned here, but fresh will also work (they may take a bit more time to cook).
• Coconut milk – the canned kind you find with the other Asian ingredients at your grocery store (NOT the milk substitute you’d find in the dairy section). I recommend full-fat here instead of light.
• Onion and Garlic
• Spices: Curry Powder, Cumin, and Cinnamon – you can use just curry powder if you like, and you can add other spices to the mix such as garam masala.
• Coconut Oil – you can use another oil like canola or olive if you like, but coconut adds a nice coconut flavor to the curry.
• Fresh lime juice – skip if you must, but I definitely recommend it! Add a little bit of vinegar, like apple cider vinegar, for acidity in place of it if you don’t have fresh lime juice.
• Cilantro – optional. Omit if you prefer.

How to make Chickpea Curry

1. First, lightly caramelize the onions and garlic in coconut oil. Use a large deep skillet for this. Cook them over medium or medium low heat, stirring frequently, until they are softened an have developed a light brown color.
2. Then, add the chickpeas and spices. Stir around and continue to cook so the spices toast a bit.
3. Pour in the diced tomatoes and the juices, scraping up any brown bits from the bottom of the skillet with a wooden spoon.
4. Add the coconut milk and continue heating until it’s simmering.
5. Finally, turn off the heat and add the lime juice and cilantro. At this point, season to taste with salt and pepper. You’re ready to serve on top of a pile of fluffy basmati rice and/or with naan bread!

Tips and Tricks

• Speed up caramelizing the onions and garlic by adding a teaspoon or two of white or brown sugar to them as you cook. The result will be a deeper darker brown color and a sweeter flavor profile, mimicking caramelized onions that have been cooking for much longer.
• Don’t skip the lime juice! It adds some much needed acidity to the curry. If you like, you can add the lime zest as well with the other spices.
• Do make sure you wait until the end to salt the curry. Depending on the brand you use, the chickpeas and tomatoes will already have some salt, and adding lime juice also brings out other flavors in a similar way to salt so you may find you need less. I used about 1 teaspoon kosher salt in mine, with about 1/4 teaspoon pepper.
• For a thicker curry, you can stir in a cornstarch slurry. But I found it was already plenty thick without it.

Other Curry Recipes

• Coconut Chicken Curry
• Green Chicken Curry with Sweet Potatoes and Spinach
• Easy Chicken Tikka Masala