Chana masala — Indian-style chickpeas in spicy gravy

chana masala chickpeas and a spicy gravy one of my favorite meatless dishes of all time it's cheap it's nutritious it's a great thing for meal prep totally the kind of thing that i would freeze in ice cube trays so that i can easily thaw out the exact quantity i want for a weeknight dinner i'm sure there's a million ways to make this dish but my concept of it obviously is shaped by my life eating in north indian style restaurants in the united states and i think i got pretty close to that taste with the more complicated version i'm gonna show you later but first here's gotta be the easiest possible way to make this nothing but pantry ingredients all of which are available in standard western supermarkets we will do no chopping get a little saucepan and put in some oil ghee would be great if you have it but i'm just using olive oil and i'll put in a heaped tablespoon of any store-bought garam masala any pre-ground pre-mixed indian spice blend that you've got is fine and i will just fry that in the oil until i can really smell it another great pantry staple right here these little teeny cans of diced chilies tons of flavor in my research i noticed that two parts cooked chickpeas to one part tomatoes is a pretty common ratio use whatever canned tomato product you like i really like this brand here in the states and they make a different one that is fire roasted this is a pantry champion right here tons of deep flavors straight out of the can and you could totally chop up a bunch of onion and garlic and ginger yourself or you could simply take them in powdered form a big teaspoon each of garlic and onion powder and yes ground ginger this is a common thing in western pantries where it's used to make gingerbread persons at christmas time but seriously if you give it time to rehydrate it tastes surprisingly like fresh ginger in a sauce or stew i'll drain out two cans of chickpeas the liquid is just too starchy too gluey but you could put in some of it if you wanted in those go along with enough water to get everything covered might as well clean out the tomato can in the process canned products like these are often already pretty salty so i wouldn't put in any salt just yet just bring that to a simmer stir it every now and then and in 20 or 30 minutes you'll see the liquid has thickened up nicely that's the starch from the chickpeas gelatinizing have a taste and make sure to actually taste a chickpea if you only taste the gravy you'll probably end up under seasoning this because the chickpeas are bland some salt in there and a lot of people put in lemon juice to brighten this at the end i'll keep this pure pantry and just use some neutral vinegar that's rice vinegar and yeah i said no chopping but if you have some fresh coriander leaves also known as cilantro in my hemisphere those are nice to stir in at the last second before you pour this over rice now is that the best chana masala ever no but it's pretty good and it was stupid easy and cheap but let's try it the hard way now or a harder way in the states people like me refer to any chickpea masala as chana masala but chana is a specific kind of chickpea and this is them they're kind of small and i think they have much nicer texture if you buy them dry a cup and a half will equal what you would get from two of those 14 ounce cans by weight it's 500 grams dry you don't have to pre-soak them but it helps them cook faster and more evenly just cover them by a couple of inches i did this first thing in the morning and here they are in the afternoon plumped up quite a bit and while those are soaking you can make your own masala a fresh spice mixture and this will require ingredients from my local indo-pak grocery which reminds me i need to scan my receipt into fetch rewards the sponsor of this video fetch is this app you just download and whenever you go shopping you lay out your receipt and you scan it with your phone it doesn't have to be from a mainstream supermarket this is a mom and pop indian grocery that took two pictures to scan but the app stitched them together for me and then you hit submit and then you get points back coupon points you can use to save money on like almost anything you could think of just browse the rewards section i could get a discount on hulu or some gear at best buy or some takeout food or anything from amazon if you do most of your shopping online it's even easier to scan your receipts i just hit this e button and it scans my email for eligible e-receipts and i get coupon points back it's as easy as that you can get started doing this yourself with 2 000 points from me if you sign up through my link in the description and enter my code regucio when you scan your first receipt that's all down in the description thank you fetch okay into a dry pan i will put a teaspoon of cumin seeds half a teaspoon of coriander seeds half a teaspoon of black peppercorns half a teaspoon of mustard seeds a black cardamom pod a tiny scrap of a cinnamon stick and half a teaspoon of fenugreek seeds i will turn my heat on medium and toast these until i can smell them you do not have to make your own masala but it does taste better it gives you creative control i have no idea if any of this is traditional i just play with different indian spices whenever i do this and if you buy whole spices they last forever in your pantry so it doesn't matter that i only make indian food like once a month they're gonna last once these have cooled i will load them into the coffee grinder that i use for spices and i will pulse that until smooth there that's a heaped tablespoon of fresh masala okay now's a good time to get our chana cooking you could discard the soaking water there's some research that says that maybe a quarter of the indigestible starches that give you gas are in the water but lately i've been cooking my beans in the soaked water i'll just top it off with a little more there's good nutrition in there and probably some flavor and texture if i take two pills of an alpha galactosidase supplement with dinner i'm fine a lot of indian cooks put in some baking soda sodium bicarb that makes them cook like twice as fast but i also think it makes the texture a little slimy for my taste and apparently it destroys a lot of the vitamin b i'll just put in some salt probably a teaspoon for this much salt accelerates cooking too just not as much and it seasons the inside i don't cover the pan i prefer to have it open so i can see what's happening to make sure the water level doesn't drop too low in which case they'd stick to the bottom and burn a lot of indian cooks would use a pressure cooker you could totally do that but these are only going to take like half an hour in there i like to finish cooking them in the sauce that we're gonna make while those boil okay an onion lots of indian recipes say three onions i think their onions are way smaller than mine like three big fresh tomatoes you could totally just use one of those 14 ounce cans instead a couple of chilies these are serranos but use whatever kind you like you could use the canned ones if you wanted a few big garlic cloves and a real big thumb of ginger you want to cheat and use a prepared ginger garlic paste from the indian grocery go for it i'm going to puree this sauce which means that i can do some particularly unschooled chopping even for me just clank it up into chunks you could scrape the ribs out of your chilis if you want to limit the heat or don't peel and chop that garlic peel this ginger this next part goes so much faster if you use your widest frying pan instead of a narrow tall pot you'll see why you could use some oil again but i got a jar of ghee from the indo pack the rich flavor of that really shines through in this dish in goes my fresh masala on medium heat oh and also some turmeric without that the color can be kind of drab fry that until you really smell it and then it's nice to give the garlic and ginger a head start just to get a little color on it but basically as soon as i'm scared things are going to burn in goes all the other veg i want to emphasize that even though i'm calling this the hard version of chana masala i'm still showing you a significantly simplified and streamlined recipe that i have synthesized from the various ones i've researched indian food is freaking complicated a lot of people would fry these vegetables kind of one at a time i think you can get away with doing it all at once though if you stir it constantly and get some color on them after you've evaporated off most of the water and that will happen way faster in a giant frying pan with tons of surface area alrighty things are browning to the point where ugg my fond is gonna burn in with a little water and just enough water to clean out the inside of that pan and not leave any goodness behind as i dump this into the food processor you could use any kind of blender just get it as smooth as possible i think in a lot of restaurants they would push that through a fine mesh strainer to get out all the various bits of cellulose you could do that if you want your gravy silky smooth i'm not going to bother fiber is good hey i think my china are already you can just taste them to assess i think you want them to be just tender before they go into the sauce i've given my big pan a cursory wash and in with some more ghee and some more spices this time the whole spices that i don't want to send through the blender those are green cardamom pods insanely delicious things and some bay leaves if you have them maybe they'll actually do something i doubt it when i can smell the cardamom i'm going to fry a big squeeze of tomato paste you don't have to use this but it adds some strength of flavor a nice red color and that is going to burn that is going to burn that's a close one once that is all stirred together i can put in my channa and since i was conservative about the quantity of water i boiled them in i now don't have to worry about lifting them out of that water i'm going to want at least this much water in the finished dish so everything goes in i'm going to let these simmer in there for at least 15 minutes again to let that starch from the chickpeas gelatinize in the sauce for finishing flavors again lemon juice would be great to brighten it up but check this out amchor these are dried mango slices you can buy them powdered but again i prefer to buy whole indian spices so they last longer for me just get that as fine as possible this is going to be my finishing acid it is super tart stuff but it's also got all these funky aromatic notes it's my new favorite thing it just needs a couple of minutes to rehydrate in there give that a taste i'ma do what i know the restaurants do and put in a big pinch of sugar no shame and some more salt and i can already tell that as this cools i'm gonna need to water it down like anything thickened with starch this will thicken a lot as it cools to eating temperature don't ask me why i transferred that to a different pot long story but yeah it needed a fair bit more water and of course some handfuls of fresh cilantro right at the end oh you want to know how i made my rice i know this method has become a bit of an internet controversy of late but honestly try boiling basmati rice as if it were pasta big pot of boiling water heavily salted just dump the rice in no need to rinse it first the starch coat will wash off in there after 15 minutes tops it'll be done you just fish some out with a fork and have a taste dump it into a strainer drain it let it steam off for a minute and if you like fluffy separate rice grains this method is simply foolproof now is starting from scratch with dried chana really worth it holy crap i was not ready for what a big difference this makes the texture of those is just outstanding they're like caviar the flavor of that sauce is super rich and sophisticated i love those whole green cardamom pods floating around in there i just eat them are you supposed to eat them i always have don't eat the bay leaves though they can poke your insides anyway there you go a simple version and a simplified but still kind of complicated version combine ideas from both it's just chickpeas and a spicy tomato sauce do it however you want it's great

Channel: Adam Ragusea

Views: 721,786

Rating: 4.8940473 out of 5

Keywords: chana masala recipe, chana masala restaurant style, chana masala home cooking, chana, kabuli chana, meal prep, chickpeas, chickpea masala, garbanzo beans, garbanzos, curry, garam masala, masala, from scratch, chana masala recipe restaurant style, chana masala restaurant style recipe, chana masala powder home cooking

Id: iKMI1xkU_oo

Length: 10min 35sec (635 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 24 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/2Liberal4You]

Three comments in one:

1. I know this was already posted, but the person that posted it downloaded it and uploaded it on v.redd.it, meaning that Adam wouldn't get the views from it.

2. I'm a vegetarian, so I must post the vegetarian videos. Good video overall. Best vegetarian video on the channel, probably.

3. I think the bay leaf thing that he says in videos would be funny as a meme. I don't know how to meme it, but it's something brave that no one but Adam has the courage to say.

[u/SirBrownstone]

Maybe a stupid question, but I'm not from the US so I'm not up to date on all that: is it OK for him to use Goya, or better, is that a statement? Or was this whole Goya/Trump/Boycott thing not as big as a thing as my Twitter feed made me believe?