How to Make a Quick Chicken Curry w/ Vegetables

This is a quick chicken curry with a bunch of vegetables. If you’ve done some meal prep, you can make this happen in 20-30 minutes, start to finish.

Meal Prep

I designed this quick sauce to be used with cooked chicken and vegetables. If you need some help, here’s a quick guide on making sheet pan chicken and vegetables for meal prep:

How to Cook Sheet Pan Chicken and Vegetables

You can also do this with raw chicken and vegetables, you’ll just need to add them much earlier to make sure they cook properly.

Making the Quick Chicken Curry

Start by adding some coconut oil, coconut milk, canned tomatoes, and grated ginger to a large pan. You want something with tall sides. If you don’t have a big pan, go with a pot instead. Turn the pan on medium-high and keep an eye on it while you make the spice mixture.

Measure all of the spices into a spice grinder. You can use a store-bought curry powder, but it won’t be as flavorful or vibrant.

Grind the spices and chiles into a fairly fine powder and add that spice mixture to the pan.

Bring the sauce to a low boil and cook for about 10 minutes. Stir every minute or two to prevent the sauce from sticking. After about 10 minutes, the sauce should be notably thicker.

Then add the chicken and vegetables to the sauce and cook for another 5 minutes. The chicken and vegetables are already cooked, so you’re just trying to get everything hot and delicious.

After 5 minutes, you should be ready to eat.

Serving

You could eat this quick chicken curry plain, or you could serve it over Basmati rice. We chose to eat it with some quinoa.

You could also top it with some chopped cilantro for an extra burst of flavor. We didn’t have any cilantro on hand, so we tore some mint leaves and put them on top.

This should take 20-30 minutes, start to finish. It’s a delicious weeknight dinner.

Print Recipe

Quick Curry Chicken and Vegetables

This quick version of a stereotypical Indian curry carries 80% of the flavor in 20% of the time. If you've done a bit of meal prep, you can easily put this together in 20-30 minutes. Even if you haven't cooked the chicken and vegetables in advance, this is still a fast and easy way to get dinner on the table.

Oh, and it tastes great too.

Prep Time10 minutes mins

Cook Time15 minutes mins

Total Time25 minutes mins

Course: Main Course

Cuisine: Indian

Keyword: chicken, curry, easy, Meal Prep, quick, sauce

Servings: 4 people

Ingredients

• 1 Tbsp coconut oil
• 1 14.5-oz can diced tomatoes
• 1 14-oz can coconut milk
• 2 inches ginger grated
• 4 cooked chicken thighs sliced into bite-sized pieces, *See Note
• 2 cups cooked, mixed vegetables *See Note

Spice Mixture – **See Note

• 1 tsp coriander seed
• 1/2 tsp cumin seed
• 1/2 tsp mustard seed
• 1/2 tsp ground turmeric
• 10 whole cloves
• 1/4 tsp whole black pepper
• 1/4 tsp garlic powder
• 2-3 dried Thai chile peppers any small chile works, add as many as you want

For Serving

• 2 cups cooked rice or quinoa
• fresh cilantro
• fresh mint

Instructions

• Add the coconut oil, coconut milk, tomatoes, and ginger to a large pot or deep pan. Turn the heat to medium-high.
• While those are coming to temp, place all of the spices into a spice grinder and grind into a powder. Add the ground spices to the pan on the stove. If using raw chicken and vegetables, add these here as well.
• Bring the mixture to a low boil and cook for about 10 minutes, stirring often. The sauce should thicken significantly.
• Add the chicken and vegetables to the sauce on the stove and cook for another 5 minutes. At this point, everything is cooked, so you're just trying to get the chicken hot and coated in the sauce.
• Serve the curry over some rice or quinoa. Top with chopped cilantro or fresh mint leaves.

Notes

* I designed this recipe to be used in conjunction with meal prep. If you didn’t do the prep or don’t want to, no worries. Use a few cups of mixed, chopped vegetables and 4 raw chicken thighs that you cut into strips. Add them to the sauce at the very beginning to make sure they all cook through.

** If you don’t have a large spice collection, you can always just use 1.5 Tbsp of store-bought curry powder. The flavors won’t be as strong or as vibrant, but it can save a bunch of time.