Weeknight Favorite | Chana Saag

Who wants easy weeknight Indian food you can make at home?!

Me me me!

Not sure what chana saag is? It’s my personal all-time favorite Indian dish – spiced (often creamy) spinach with chickpeas. It’s hands-down the best way to eat a TON of spinach and love every bite of it 🙂

You may remember I posted a recipe for slow-cooked chickpea artichoke saag ages ago. I still love it, and sometimes the slow cooker is exactly what we need, right?!

But I found a fantastically fast recipe for my beloved Indian favorite in my cookbook 1000 Vegan Recipes. It just takes minutes to make, and I usually have all the ingredients in my apartment. I used that as a base recipe and added a TON of flavoring ingredients because the restaurant versions I get are sooooo much more flavorful and spicy than the original recipe was. But my gosh was I happy to see that recipe that doesn’t even take 20 minutes!!!

The best part is that you can easily swap out ingredients, add or remove what you like the most, make it more or less spicy. If you’re scared of spicy Indian food (and I mean that as in “full of spices” as well as “full of heat”), then I’d start by halving all of the spices in this. You can always add more, but it’s not easy to take away! The coconut cream is also optional, or can be replaced with any kind of creamer.

So here it is!

chana saag

2016-01-20 13:30:05

Serves 4

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Ingredients

1. 1 T avocado oil
2. 1 onion
3. 4 cloves garlic, minced
4. 1 T minced or grated fresh ginger
5. 1 1/2 t ground garam masala
6. 3/4 t ground harissa
7. 1 t salt
8. 1 1/2 t ground coriander
9. 10 ounces frozen chopped spinach
10. 3 T coconut cream
11. 1 can garbanzo beans

Instructions

1. Saute onion in avocado oil over medium heat for about 5 minutes. Add garlic and ginger and saute for another couple minutes. Add all the spices and stir just to coat the onions with them. Then add almost all of the spinach – I hold back just about one big handful (just to get the texture I want.) You can add the spinach right in there from frozen. The melting frost actually helps get a fantastic texture!
2. Once the spinach is thawed and cooked, put it in a blender or food processor with the coconut cream and puree. Add the mixture back into the same pan you cooked everything in, put it back on medium heat, add the last handful of spinach and the garbanzo beans and cook about five more minutes.

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