Vegetable Curry with Rice
As you know by now, I love curry dishes. I’ve got five-plus curry recipes on my website: cashew chickpea curry, vegetable chickpea curry, Thai chicken curry coconut soup, and many more! **For those who are not familiar, curry is an Indian delicacy that is full of flavor and richness. Curries have been a staple of eastern cuisine for centuries and, according to this post on Sukhi’s Indian Cuisine, while no one really knows when curry was invented, “the use of spices in a sauce to flavor meats has been tracked back to 2500BCE from Mohenjo-Daro.” From there, it is assumed that curries were spread across Asia and Europe via Indian monks traveling via the Silk Route. Now, we see curry flavors in dishes all across the world.
During our quarantined time in Florida, we are separating our Saturday and weekend nights from our weekdays by using that as the one night for take-out. We’ve been continuously supporting one of our favorite new local restaurants, Stage Kitchen, which has an Indian influence and some of the best curry I’ve ever had. We’ve been on a serious rotation of their curry varieties (coconut shrimp green curry, cauliflower red curry, braised short rib curry, and much more), and it inspired me to make a classic vegetable red curry over brown rice.
To make this dish, I included an array of vegetables: carrots, eggplant, bell peppers, zucchini, garlic, onion, and mushrooms. Obviously, you can add whatever you are in the mood for or remove anything you personally don’t prefer! To provide a curry flavor, I turned to my pantry staple – curry paste. After trying many, and I mean many, different kinds of curry pastes, I continuously turn to this one as my favorite. Plus, it is typically available in just about every grocery store I’ve ever been to. I also rely on spices like cayenne pepper, red pepper flakes, curry powder, and, of course, salt and pepper. For more on what curry powder is composed of, I recommend checking out the piece on Sukhi’s Indian Cuisine I highlighted above. The dish I am making here most closely identifies with a popular East Asian curry (a Japanese curry) that is a rich curry sauce served over rice. For the thickness, I like to use canned coconut milk, which can also be found at most grocery stores. In this specific curry, we needed some extra liquid and, without more coconut milk available in our house, I turned to tomato soup and honestly was impressed with the result. It helped bring that tomato flavor and also thicken the dish. This is where a “mess-up” can sometimes be a “fix-up”. Something I had never tried before but definitely something I will add to my curry regiment in the future!
To make this dish, start by mincing the garlic and chopping all of the remaining vegetables into ¼ - ½ inch pieces. In a small pot, begin cooking the rice. In a larger pot, add the avocado oil and, once hot, the garlic and onion. Sauté for around 5 minutes or until it is fragrant and the vegetables are translucent. Then, add in the curry paste and mix well. In this large pot, add the remaining chopped vegetables and season with the spices. You will sauté these veggies until they are slightly crisped on the exterior and cooked through on the inside. With all of the sautéed vegetables, add in the coconut milk and tomato soup and stir to combine everything. Cover the pot and cook, on a low-medium heat, for around 30 minutes so that the flavors develop and the vegetables fully cook through. I prefer to serve the rice and curry separately so that people can make their own bowls, but if you prefer to serve one large pot of everything, add in the rice and mix to combine. Serve hot to enjoy immediately or allow to cool and then place in the fridge in Tupperware to enjoy later in the week. Either way, it will be delicious!
Vegetable Curry with Rice
Ingredients:
- Carrots (4)
- Eggplant (1)
- Bell pepper (1)
- Zucchini (2)
- Yello onion (1)
- Mushrooms (2 cups)
- Garlic (1 clove)
- Curry paste (2 tablespoons)
- Coconut milk (1 13.5oz can)
- Tomato soup or chicken broth (1 cup)
- Avocado oil (1 tablespoon)
- Brown rice (2 cups)
- Curry powder (1 teaspoon)
- Red pepper flakes (1 teaspoon)
- Cayenne pepper (1 teaspoon)
- Salt
- Pepper
Instructions:
How to cook Vegetable Curry with Rice
- Mince the garlic clove and set aside
- Chop all of the remaining vegetables into ¼ - ½ inch pieces
- In a large pot, add 1 tablespoon of avocado oil and, once hot, add the chopped onion and minced garlic
- Sauté with a wooden spoon for around 5 minutes, or until they are translucent and fragrant
- Add the 2 tablespoons of curry paste and mix well
- Add in all of the chopped vegetables and season with 1 teaspoon of curry powder, red pepper flakes, cayenne pepper and salt and pepper
- Sauté this mixture for around 10 minutes, or until the vegetables are slightly charred and semi cooked through
- Add in the can of coconut milk and the 1 cup of tomato soup or chicken broth and mix well
- Cook in the pot, covered, on low-medium heat for around 30 minutes so that the vegetables fully cook through and the mixture begins to thicken a bit
- While the curry is cooking, cook the rice in a separate pot by combining the 2 cups of rice with 4 cups of water and cook, covered, on low-medium heat until all of the liquid is absorbed
- Once the rice and curry is fully cooked, place the rice in a bowl and top with the curried vegetables and broth and enjoy hot!
- Gluten Free
- Soy Free
- Nut Free
- Dairy Free
- Vegan
- Vegetarian
** after a lot of self-reflection and doing the work of Layla F Saad’s Me and White Supremacy (a book I highly recommend everyone reads) and Rachel Rickett’s Social Activism 101 & 102 courses, I realized the cultural appropriation that was occurring on my website when it came to recipes. I was modifying recipes deeply embedded in oppressed cultures without paying any respect to the history or original ingredients used. After realizing this, I went through and made changes to many of my recipes. This section is part of what was edited and included.