While chickpeas made in a curried way is most popular in the northern part of India, this one here is a South Indian style Chickpea Curry Recipe. A highly protein laden dish, this Coconut Chickpea Curry is a spicy and super delicious curry preparation made with healthy white chickpeas, bold spices and fragrant coconut. This is even vegan. Also, don’t get intimidated with the long list of ingredients. If you follow the recipe well, making this curry is not that difficult.
About Chickpea Curry
In my personal collection of recipes, I have quite a few varieties of the Chickpea Curry which I make regularly at home.
My all-time favorite is this robust and flavorsome one, the authentic Punjabi Chana Masala. This recipe has a good balance of spiciness and tanginess, which enhances the overall flavors too. It is just like the Chickpea Curry you get on the streets of Delhi and Punjab.
However, the Coconut Chickpea Curry recipe that I have here on this post is a South Indian version. So, the real taste comes from the coconut and whole spices that are used in this particular variation of the dish.
The distinct taste of coconut is quite dominant in this South Indian variant. Also, there is a subtle sweetness in this preparation, and it is not sour or tangy.
Basically, in this Chickpea Curry recipe, all commonly used ingredients of South Indian cooking are added. The grated coconut being one of the main ingredients which just makes the dish awesome.
You can also experiment and make the same recipe with black chickpeas, green peas or cauliflower or potato as well.
The masala paste of the Punjabi or North Indian style Chickpea Curry uses onions, tomatoes, spices, dried pomegranate seeds or dried mango powder. This also imparts the desired spiciness spicy and sourness in the curry.
Along with these ingredients, garam masala powder or chana masala powder is also primary in this typical way of preparing the dish.
But in this Coconut Chickpea Curry Recipe from South India, I add 2 mildly hot dried red chilies for a lesser spicy version at times.
On some other occasions, I add 4 dried red chilies to increase the fieriness. So, you can vary the quantity of red chilies as per your taste, spice preference and the quality of red chilies.
Dried Chickpeas or Canned Chickpeas
I always use dried chickpeas when making any recipe with it. Soaking dried chickpeas and then cooking them is an additional prep work that you need to do. But my recipe works great with canned chickpeas too.
The coconut and spices curry base is so flavorful, that once you add water, simply add the canned chickpeas (after draining the liquids and rinsing). Mix and stir to combine and simmer for some minutes.
To make Chickpea Coconut Curry with canned chickpeas, add 3 cups of the canned chickpeas. Remember to drain all the liquids from the canned chickpeas and thoroughly rinse the chickpeas a few times in water, before you add them to the curry base.
How to make Chickpea Curry
Pressure Cook Chickpeas
1. First, rinse 1 cup dried white chickpeas for a couple of times in water. Then, soak the chickpeas in 3 cups water overnight or for 8 to 9 hours. Below is a photo of the soaked chickpeas.
Tip: If you have forgotten to soak the chickpeas, soak them in hot water for 2 hours.
2. Drain the water. Rinse the chickpeas again a couple of times.
3. Again drain all of the water and add the soaked chickpeas in a 3 litre stovetop pressure cooker. Add ½ teaspoon salt.
If you do not have a stovetop pressure cooker, cook chickpeas in a pot or pan covering them with 3.5 to 4 cups of water. Or opt to cook them in the Instant Pot adding 3 cups of water.
5. Add 3 cups water.
6. Stir to mix. Cover tightly with the pressure cooker’s lid. Pressure cook the chickpeas for about 20 to 22 minutes or 18 to 20 whistles on medium to high heat. The chickpeas should be completely cooked and have a melt-in-mouth consistency.
Note: If cooking chickpeas in a pot, add about 3.5 to 4 cups water with salt to the chickpeas. Cover and cook the chickpeas till softened.
Make Chickpea Curry Base
7. While the chickpeas are cooking, prepare the curry base. Gather the spices listed below:
- ½ tablespoon fennel seeds
- ½ tablespoon cumin seeds
- 1 tablespoon coriander seeds
- 4 to 5 black peppercorns
- 2 green cardamoms
- 2 to 3 cloves
- 1 black cardamom
- 1 inch cinnamon
- 2 dried red chilies (mild to medium hot), seeds removed
- 1 small piece stone flower (dagad phool), optional
For a spicy taste, add about 3 to 4 dried red chilies. The amount of red chilies to be added depends on the heat quotient in the chilies.
So, if you use red chilies which have a high heat quotient, then just 1 or 2 dried red chilies would be fine.
8. You need to toast or roast the spices first. In a frying pan or skillet, dry roast all the spices stirring often on low heat till they become fragrant – taking care that you do not burn them.
9. Next, add ½ cup tightly packed grated fresh coconut and continue to roast.
Do not worry if you do not have fresh coconut. Instead add about ⅓ cup of unsweetened desiccated or shredded coconut.
10. Stir continuously while roasting the coconut, so that there is uniform browning.
11. Roast till the coconut becomes golden. Remove the pan from heat and allow this mixture to cool.
12. Once the coconut-spice mixture is cooled, add it to a high-speed blender or a mixer-grinder jar.
Also remember to remove the husk from the black cardamom and just add its seeds in the blender or grinder.
13. Add about ⅔ to ¾ cup water and grind to a fine and smooth paste. Ensure that the curry paste is not gritty or has fine chunks of the spices or coconut. Set aside.
Make Coconut Chickpea Curry
14. Heat 3 tablespoons oil in a pan. Keeping heat to a low, add ½ teaspoon mustard seeds and allow them to crackle.
16. Then, add 1 tej patta (Indian bay leaf) and stir.
17. Add ⅓ cup finely chopped onions.
18. Stir and sauté till the onions turn translucent and soften on low to medium heat.
19. Add the below listed ingredients:
- 1 teaspoon ginger-garlic paste
- ¼ teaspoon turmeric powder (ground turmeric)
- 1 pinch of asafoetida (hing)
- 10 to 12 curry leaves
20. Stir and sauté on low heat for a few seconds or until the raw aroma of ginger-garlic goes away.
21. Add ½ cup chopped tomatoes.
22. Sauté on low to medium heat for about 2 to 3 minutes or till the tomatoes soften.
23. Add the prepared curry paste.
24. Stir very well to combine with the rest of the sautéed ingredients.
25. Then, add the drained and cooked chickpeas.
26. Stir well again and sauté for a minute.
27. Now, add 1 cup water and 1 or 2 slit green chilies.
28. Season with salt as required. Mix again.
29. First bring to a boil on medium heat and later simmer the curry on low to medium heat for 10 to 15 minutes; or till the curry thickens a bit and you see some oil floating on top.
Mash a few chickpeas with the back of the spoon to thicken the curry. Check the seasonings and add more salt as per your taste. Add more water, if needed depending on the consistency you prefer.
30. Lastly, switch off the heat and add 2 tablespoons chopped coriander leaves (cilantro). Stir well.
31. Serve Chickpea Curry hot with Indian breads like poori, Naan, tandoori roti, bhatura, aloo paratha, bread, jeera rice or steamed rice accompanied with lemon wedges and onion slices.
Expert Tips for Chickpea Curry
- Chickpea Quality: Remember to always use fresh dried white chickpeas and the ones which are in their shelf period. If you use aged chickpeas, it will take more time to cook and the dish will not even taste good.
- Swapping with Canned Chickpeas: In case you have canned chickpeas at home over dried chickpeas, you can make the dish with it as well. You may use about 3 cups canned chickpeas in that case.
- Cooking Chickpeas in a pan: If you plan to cook the chickpeas in a pot, add about 3.5 to 4 cups water and salt to the chickpeas. Then, cover and cook till the chickpeas soften.
- Spiciness: Make the curry less or more spicy by adding less or more dried red chilies. The quantity will also depend on the spice and heat quotient of the chilies.
- Fats: You can use ghee in place of oil to cook this recipe. In this case, it will not be vegan. The recipe is also possible with black chickpeas instead of white chickpeas. You can also add make the same curry cauliflower, potatoes or green peas.
- Leftovers: The leftover curry can be refrigerated for 1 to 2 days. However, I recommend you consume it the same day to avoid any digestion-related issues. Before serving the refrigerated curry, gently reheat it in a pan. If the curry has become too thick, add some water to dilute the consistency a bit and then reheat.
FAQs
You may try. But I suggest you do as a curry base prepared with freshly toasted/roasted and ground spices imparts a different and unique flavor in the dish as compared to the one made with pre-ground spices.
This Coconut Chickpea Curry will stay good in the refrigerator for about 1 to 2 days.Just make sure to reheat it properly before serving.
Since canned chickpeas are pre-cooked, you just have to prepare the base curry. Once you make it, add the canned chickpeas in it and let the curry simmer for a some minutes or until it is slightly thickened or reached the desired consistency.
Yes, you can certainly prepare the curry in ghee. Note, then it won’t be anymore vegan.
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Chickpea Curry Recipe | Coconut Chickpea Curry
Ingredients
For soaking & pressure cooking chickpeas
- 1 cup dried white chickpeas (kabuli chana or safed chana) – 180 grams
- 3 cups water – for soaking
- 3 cups water – for pressure cooking
- ½ teaspoon salt
For toasting or roasting spices
- ½ cup fresh grated coconut – tightly-packed
- 1 inch cinnamon
- ½ tablespoon fennel seeds
- ½ tablespoon cumin seeds
- 1 tablespoon coriander seeds
- 2 dry red chilies or 3 to 4 chillies – would make the dish spicy. remove the seeds.
- 2 to 3 cloves
- 1 black cardamom
- 2 green cardamoms
- 4 to 5 black peppercorns
- 1 small piece stone flower (dagad phool, pathar phool), optional
Other ingredients to make curry
- 3 tablespoons oil
- ½ teaspoon mustard seeds
- 1 tej patta (Indian bay leaf), small-sized
- ⅓ cup onions – finely chopped, 50 grams or 1 medium-sized
- 1 teaspoon Ginger Garlic Paste or 2 to 3 small to medium, peeled garlic cloves and ½ inch peeled ginger crushed or made into a paste in mortar-pestle
- ¼ or ½ teaspoon turmeric powder (ground turmeric)
- 1 pinch asafoetida (hing), optional
- 10 to 12 curry leaves
- ½ cup tomatoes – finely chopped, 80 grams or 1 medium-sized
- 1 cup water or add as required
- 1 green chilli – slit
- 2 tablespoons coriander leaves (cilantro) – chopped, for garnish
- salt as required
Instructions
Cooking chickpeas
- First rinse the dried chickpeas for a couple of times in water. Then soak the chickpeas in 3 cups of water overnight or for 8 to 9 hours.
- Drain the water. Rinse the chickpeas again for a couple of times.
- Again drain all the water and add the soaked chickpeas in a 3 litre stovetop pressure cooker.
- Add ½ teaspoon salt and 3 cups water. Stir to mix.
- Pressure cook the chickpeas for 20 to 22 minutes or 18 to 20 whistles on medium to high heat.
- If cooking chickpeas in a pot, then add about 3.5 to 4 cups water and salt to the chickpeas. Cover and cook the chickpeas till they softened.
Making curry paste
- When the chickpeas are cooking, you can roast or toast the spices. Gather all the spices you will need and set them aside.
- In a pan or skillet, on a low heat dry roast the spices except coconut – listed under the "toasting or roasting the spices" heading above, till they become fragrant. Take care not to burn them, so roast them on low heat and stir often.Remember to roast all spices except coconut.
- Once the spices smell fragrant, add the fresh grated coconut to the spices and begin to roast or toast on low heat.Note you could use either fresh grated coconut or frozen shredded coconut and even ⅓ cup of unsweetened shredded or desiccated coconut.
- Stir continuously while roasting the coconut, so that there is uniform and even cooking.
- Roast till the coconut become golden. Remove the pan from the stovetop allow the this mixture to cool at room temperature.
- Once the coconut-spice mixture is cooled, add them to a high-speed blender or mixer-grinder. Make a note to remove the husks from the black cardamom and just add its seeds in the blender or grinder.
- Add ⅔ to ¾ cup water and grind to a smooth and fine consistency making sure the curry paste does not have any small chunks or bits of the spices and coconut.
Making chickpea curry
- Heat 3 tablespoons oil in a pan. Keep heat to a low or medium-low.
- Add the mustard seeds and allow them to crackle. Then add tejpatta and stir.
- Next add the finely chopped onions. Stir and sauté on low to medium heat till the onions turn translucent and soften.
- Add ginger-garlic paste, turmeric power, asafoetida and curry leaves.
- Stir and sauté for a few seconds on low heat till the raw aroma of ginger-garlic goes away.
- Add the chopped tomatoes. Sauté on a low to medium heat, for about 2 to 3 minutes till the tomatoes soften.
- Add the ground coconut and spices curry paste. Stir very well to combine.
- Then add the drained and cooked chickpeas. Stir again well and saute for a minute.
- Now add 1 cup of water and 1 or 2 slit green chilies.
- Season with salt as required.
- Give a boil first and then simmer the curry for 10 to 15 minutes on a low to medium heat or till the gravy thickens a bit and you see some oil floating on top.
- Mash a few chickpeas with the sides of the spoon to thicken the gravy. Check the seasonings and add more salt if you prefer.
- Switch off the heat. Lastly add chopped coriander leaves. Stir well.
- Serve Chickpea Curry hot with chapati, poori, bread or steamed rice accompanied with lemon wedges and thin onion slices or a side of vegetable salad.
Notes
Ingredient Notes & Substitutions
- Dried Chickpeas: Use 3 cups of canned chickpeas.
- Stone flower: Can be skipped.
- Asafoetida: Optional ingredient and can be left out.
- Fresh Coconut: Swap with ⅓ cup of unsweetened shredded coconut or can make the curry paste with frozen shredded coconut.
- Curry leaves: Gives a lot of flavor to the curry, so do not omit it from the recipe. You could also add dried curry leaves instead.
- Black mustard seeds: Swap with small yellow mustard seeds.
- Dry red chillies: Add chillies which are less spicy or medium-spicy. You could also use the Indian variety of Kashmiri red chillies. If out of red chillies, add ½ teaspoon red chilli powder or cayenne pepper or paprika when you add turmeric powder to the softened onions.
Recipe Notes
- If you have forgotten to soak chickpeas, soak them in hot water for 2 hours.
- For a less spicy curry, add only 1 red chilli or half of one chilli.
- Since coconut is one of the important ingredient in the recipe, make sure it is fresh and not rancid. The coconut should have a mild sweet taste.
- You can cook chickpeas in an Instant Pot or in a pan on the stovetop adding water as needed.
- If using canned chickpeas, add them when you add water to the curry paste. Simmer for some minutes until the curry thickens a bit and the chickpeas absorb the flavor of the curry.
- Leftovers can be refrigerated for 1 to 2 days.
- For a gluten-free curry, do not add asafoetida (hing).
Nutrition Info (Approximate Values)
This Chickpea Curry recipe from the blog archives, first published in July 2013 has been republished and updated on December 2022.
Thanks for this recipe. I made it (minus black cardamon and mustard seed, which I didn’t have) and found it delicious. It reminded me very much of a chana served with appam in Chennai saravana bhavan. (that is meant to be a compliment)
thank you minnmichelle. i have never had any dishes from saravana bhavan, but heard a lot about them. thanks for the compliment ????
Tried this recipe today and my family loved it! thank you so much 🙂
Welcome Tanusha. Nice to know that you all liked chana masala recipe.
Goodness me, your recipe tastes absolutely wonderful! Thank you for such detailed yet utterly clear instructions, it turned out absolutely perfectly.
I did have to make a couple of amendments, mainly because I don’t have a wet grinder. I toasted the spices and ground them in a coffee grinder, then made a paste with water. For the coconut I had to use a creamed coconut block which I finely grated and added to the ingredients.
Before adding the chick peas I used a hand blender to make sure everything was as finely paste as possible. The end result was not grainy at all, so this method will work if you don’t have a wet grinder.
Also, as I had them in the cupboard, I added the juice of half a lemon, and a tiny pot’s worth of mango chutney. These additions certainly didn’t hurt the flavour.
Once again, thanks you so much! I can’t wait to try more of your recipes.
thanks a lot lee. i am amazed at the small and useful steps you have implemented in the absence of a wet grinder. great 🙂
thanks for sharing all the methods and variations you have done as this will help readers who do not have a wet grinder. do try the other recipes as well. happy cooking.
I’m getting so hungry looking at this recipe, I’m dying to make it! But I have no stone flower, curry leaves, hing, or cardamom pods. I do have cardamom seeds, though. How much seed should I use, & are there any substitutes for the flower, leaves, & hing? Or should I try a different recipe?
druid, for some reason, your comments were in the spam folder. not sure why.
you can skip stone flower and hing. curry leaves gives their aroma and taste, so my suggestion would be not to skip it. but if you do not get them where you live, then you do not have any option, but to make the chana masala without curry leaves.
for cardamom seeds, you can add 2 to 3 cardamom seeds. there is no substitute for curry leaves, stone flower.
you can try this recipe as i feel these ingredients will not be difficult for you to have or get – https://www.vegrecipesofindia.com/punjabi-chole-chickpeas-in-a-spicy-gravy/
Hi. Do you have a suggestion for a wet grinder?
by wet grinder, you mean the table top grinder (for grinding idli & dosa batter) or the mixer-grinder used in indian homes for grinding, blending and juicing?
Too good, but if possible translate the words which can be know easy
in which language. hindi or other language.
Tried it out and my entire family loved ur awesome recipe. Thanks Dassana. Keep it going.
nice to know sai and thanks for sharing.
replace coconut with kaju paste and it is super delicious. spices and kaju to be ground separately.
thanks sandhya for sharing your suggestions, indeed kaju paste will add rich flavor and texture. traditionally coconut is added.
Thanks for posting such superb reciepes, your webpage is my go to place whenever I cook something new and it turns out delicious and awesome.I tried this chole reciepe today and it turned out excellent tastewise but somehow the texture of the gravy came out to be granular and inconsistent, what should I do to get a smooth, consistent, well bound thick gravy?
Is it that I need to grind all coconut gravy ingredients for some more time till they become fine and smooth?
Thanks dassana madam and keep posting such beautiful, neatly presented and well articulated recipes. 🙂
thanks a lot chaaya. the coconut masala needs to be ground fine. if the coconut and spices are not ground fine, the granular or gritty effect will be felt in the gravy. the coconut-spice paste should be smooth. this is applicable for most coconut based gravies, unless otherwise mentioned in the recipe.
verry nice …
thank you ankit 🙂
Thanks Dassanna
It was awesome
Welcome Nisha
Hi.. superb one. I just love all your recipes. Let me try this chana masala tonight for chapati.
Could u pls let know what is “stock” mentioned in the last point ? Thanks
thanks harini. the stock is the water in which the chana are cooked.
What a Great Recipe…… Awesome taste Dassana…. Loved it…..
thanks a lot kavita.
I was interested as the recipe is a variation of the regular chole masala,but all the recipes I have read so far have onion and garlic. How about giving alternative spices as quite a few of us are no onion no garlic people. Thanks
i do plan to add a no onion no garlic version of chole masala. about giving alternatives in a recipe containing onion garlic can be tricky as the other ingredients required have to be used in precision, so that there is an overall good balance of taste and flavor in the dish.
HI,
I love the recipe but I was wondering if I can substitute for some of the ingredients if I can’t find them like the curry leaves or asafoetida.
you cannot substitute asofoetida and curry leaves as they have their own property and characteristics. hope this help’s you 🙂 at the most you could skip them but that would impact the taste of the recipe.