Instant Pot Chickpea Curry

Instant Pot Chickpea Curry (from dry beans). Pressure cooked chickpeas and curry powder are the backbone of this quick, easy curry. Try making curry by pressure cooking your own dry beans - you'll be amazed how good they are!

Jump to:

• Ingredients
• How to Make Instant Pot Chickpea Curry
• Substitutions
• Equipment
• 📏Scaling
• Soaking chickpeas?
• Sorting Beans
• What to serve with Instant Pot Chickpea Curry
• 💡Tips and Tricks
• Instant Pot Chickpea Curry
• Related Posts
• 💬 Comments

Chanan Masala, an Indian chickpea curry, is a staple of northern Indian home cooking.

I'm not a vegetarian, but, if I had to be one, I would cook a lot more Indian food. As one of the largest vegetarian cultures in the world, they have a variety of ways to eat without meat. (And of course their spices are divine.)

Ingredients

• 1 cup (½ pound) dry chickpeas, sorted and rinsed
• 2 tablespoons butter
• 1 medium onion, diced
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 1-inch piece of ginger, peeled and grated (optional)
• 1 tablespoon curry powder
• 1 teaspoon garam masala
• ½ teaspoon cayenne pepper (optional, for heat)
• 3 cups of water (or homemade vegetable broth)
• ½ teaspoon fine sea salt
• Minced cilantro (optional, garnish)
  

How to Make Instant Pot Chickpea Curry

Sort and rinse the chickpeas

Sort the chickpeas by spreading them out on a rimmed baking sheet, looking through them, and discarding any stones, dirt, or broken beans. Rinse the chickpeas, then set them aside.

Sauté the aromatics and spices

Put the butter in an Instant Pot set to sauté mode - high (Medium-high heat in a stovetop PC). Once the butter melts, add the onion and sauté until it softens, about 5 minutes. Make a hole in the center of the onions and add the garlic, ginger, curry powder, garam masala, and (optional) cayenne pepper. Stir the spices into the onions and cook for 1 minute, stirring often, to toast the spices.

Everything in the pot

Pour in the water and scrape the bottom of the pot with a flat-edged wooden spoon to make sure nothing is sticking. Stir in the sorted and rinsed chickpeas and ½ teaspoon of fine sea salt.

Pressure Cook for 45 minutes with a Natural Release

Lock the lid. Pressure cook on high pressure for 45 minutes in an Instant Pot or other electric pressure cooker (Manual, Pressure Cook, or Pressure Cook - Custom mode in an Instant Pot), or for 40 minutes in a stovetop pressure cooker. Let the pressure come down naturally, about 20 more minutes. (If you're in a hurry, you can quick release any remaining pressure after 15 minutes).

Serve

Remove the lid from the pressure cooker, tilting it away from you to avoid the hot steam. Ladle the chickpea curry over bowls of rice, sprinkle with some minced cilantro (optional), serve, and enjoy!

Substitutions

Different Names for Chickpeas

Chickpeas are cooked across the world and can be found under a bunch of different names. Gram, Egyptian pea, garbanzo beans (Spanish), ceci (Italian), and chana (Hindi) are all different names for chickpeas. (Garbanzo is especially popular in my area.)

More authentic spices

I use curry powder as a quick shortcut; if you want more authentic spices, replace the curry powder with 1 teaspoon of whole cumin seed, 1 teaspoon of whole coriander seed, and 1 teaspoon of turmeric.

More heat? Less Heat? Adjust the cayenne

The ½ teaspoon of cayenne in the recipe gives you an "American hot" spice level. If you don't want any heat in this recipe, skip the cayenne. If you want "Desi mild," go with ¾ teaspoon of cayenne; you can go up from there if you want Desi medium or Desi hot.

Equipment

A 6-quart pressure cooker

📏Scaling

This recipe scales down easily - cut everything in half if you don't need as much curry, or have a 3-quart pressure cooker. You can double this recipe in a 6-quart pressure cooker, but beyond double you will need an 8-quart pressure cooker.

Soaking chickpeas?

I get the "to soak, or not to soak?" question all the the time. I don't soak my chickpeas in this recipe. They don't need an overnight soak, and cook to tenderness with 45 minutes at high pressure.

That said, if you need to cook the beans quickly - let's say it is a weeknight and you need them quickly - you can soak the beans to speed up the cooking time. Soaked beans cook much quicker, 20 minutes at high pressure. Sort and rinse the beans, then cover them with water by an inch and leave them to soak for at least 8 hours, preferably overnight.

Sorting Beans

Beans are an agricultural product, and stuff tends to creep in when they are processed. Beans should always be sorted and rinsed before being used to get rid of any twigs, stones, clumps of dirt, or broken beans.

To sort the beans, I pour them out on one side of a rimmed baking sheet (a half-sheet pan) to keep the beans from escaping. Then I slowly run my fingers through the pile of beans, pulling them towards me on the sheet. I watch the beans as they move, looking for anything that doesn't seem right. If I see something, I poke around in the beans until I find what caught my eye, and discard it. I repeat this a couple of times until I'm satisfied everything is out of the beans.

Then I dump the beans into a fine mesh strainer and rinse them under cold running water, to wash off any dirt or dust still on the beans.

Now, the beans are sorted, rinsed, and ready for soaking or cooking.

What to serve with Instant Pot Chickpea Curry

The traditional side dish with curry is basmati rice; I like to use my Instant Pot Brown Basmati Rice recipe with this curry.

💡Tips and Tricks

• Floaters and tough beans: If your beans are still tough when the cooking time is over, especially any "floaters" at the top of the pot, give the beans a stir, lock the lid, and pressure cook for another five minutes. Older beans take longer to cook, and if the beans have been sitting in the shelf at your store for a while, they may need extra time.
• Simmer to thicken: If you have the time, and want thicker bean liquid, simmer the beans for 20 minutes after pressure cooking. I set my Instant Pot to Sauté mode adjusted to low, set the timer to 20 minutes, and leave the lid off to let the broth evaporate.
• Vegan version: To make this a vegan recipe, replace the butter with vegetable oil. (I'm using butter to substitute for ghee, Indian clarified butter. Indian vegetarians are traditionally Lacto-vegetarian, and use butter and milk in their cooking.)
  

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Related Posts

Instant Pot Lentil Curry
Instant Pot Massaman Chicken Curry
Instant Pot Goat Curry
Instant Pot Japanese Curry
Instant Pot Tomato Dal
Instant Pot Indian Black Lentils and Kidney Beans (Dal Makhani)
My other Instant Pot and Pressure Cooker Recipes

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