Healthy Soya Curry (With Soy milk)

My 128th recipe, "Healthy Soya Curry", a National Soyfood Month special recipe. While Soya is gaining immense popularity now, due to its high nutritive value, it has been my goto food for a while, ever since I stopped eating non-vegetarian years ago. Apart from tasting amazing, it helps me with the proteins my body needs badly, after missing the protein from the meats. Soya Chunks are RKs favorite and he would be happy if I could add it in every recipe I cook 😀 I generally use it to make biryani or make this delicious curry out of it. This soya curry is extremely healthy, very easy to make and super delicious. It goes very well with rice, idli, dosa and any kind of Indian bread.

If you haven't tried using soya products yet, I guess you should probably start doing now, April is National Soyfoods Month. There is a wide-spread of products available and they are very easy to use in recipes, including Indian. You can substitute paneer with firm tofu in almost all of your famous north Indian paneer gravies. And soy milk with its nutty flavor is a great substitute for regular diary milk in some of the Indian desserts. Such simple swaps with soyfoods would be greatly beneficial to folks who want to cut down on their cholesterol intake, folks who are lactose intolerant and folks who are missing out on their daily protein intake.

This curry which I am posting here is traditionally made with chicken/lamb and flavored with coconut milk. I use soya chunks for obvious reasons (since I am a veggie 😉 ) and I have also substituted Coconut milk with Silk Soy Milk. While coconut milk is widely used in South Indian gravies, people tend to forget that coconut milk is high in Saturated fats and it is not very heart healthy. It has about 19 gm of saturated fats per 100 gm and counts very high on calories too. About 200 kcal per 100 gms.

For this reason, folks with heart ailments and generally older people would have been advised to cut down on their coconut intake. Soy milk can be a great substitute for coconut milk. It contains only 0.2 g of saturated fat per 100 gms and counts up to only ⅕th of the calories of coconut milk. Apart from the health benefits, addition of soy milk adds a nice flavor to the curry and compliments nicely the soya chunks added. Simply Yum 🙂 

Healthy Soya Curry (With Soy milk)

Healthy Soya Curry

Revathi Palani

Soya Curry is a healthy Indian gravy made with soya chunks and soy milk. Goes best as a side with rice, idli, doa or any other Indian bread.

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Prep Time 10 mins

Cook Time 20 mins

Total Time 30 mins

Course Gravy

Cuisine Indian

Servings 6

Ingredients

  

• Soya chunks (Large) - 1 Cup
• Garlic - 4 Cloves
• Ginger - ½ inch
• Onion - 1 Medium (Finely chopped)
• Tomato - 2 Small (Finely chopped)
• Salt - 1 tsp (Adjust as per taste)
• Turmeric - ¼ tsp
• Red chilli powder - ¼ tsp
• Silk soy milk - 1 Cup
• Mint leaves - 10 (Optional)
• Coriander leaves - 3 Tbsp (Roughly chopped)

To Dry roast and grind

• Dry red chilli - 1
• Cinnamon - ½ stick
• Cloves - 4
• Black peppercorns - 1 tsp
• Jeera - 1 tsp
• Coriander seeds - 1 tsp

To temper

• Oil - 1 ½ Tbsp
• Bay leaf - 1
• Cardamom - 2
• Fennel seeds - 1 tsp
• Curry leaves - 1 Sprig
• Green chilli - 1 Slit

Instructions

 

• First wash and cook the soya chunks for 5 minutes in boiling water along with ½ tsp of salt. Then drain it, rinse in cool water for about 2-3 times, squeeze it dry and keep aside until use. Peel the skin of ginger and garlic and nicely crush them using mortar and pestle.
  
   
  
   
• Dry roast the ingredients listed under "To dry roast and grind" until the coriander seeds and jeera turns golden brown (for about 30 sec). Grind them using a mixie/dry grinder into a fine powder and keep the ground masala powder closed until use.
  
   
  
   
• Now heat a pan with oil on medium flame, add the ingredients listed under "To temper" in the given order and saute until the fennel seeds turn golden brown. Add the crushed ginger, garlic and saute until they turn golden brown.
  
   
• Add the chopped onion and saute until the onion turns translucent. Now add the tomato, the remaining ½ tsp salt and saute nicely until the tomato turns fully mushy.
  
   
  
   
• Now turn down the flame to low, then add the ground masala powder, turmeric, red chilli powder and stir well to get combined.
  
   
• Now add in the soya chunks and stir well to get the masala coated over it. Add about 1 Cup of water and mix well. Add in the mint and coriander leaves give a stir and cook in low-medium flame for about 10 minutes or until the gravy thickens up.
  
   
  
   
• Finally, add the soy milk and mix well to combine. Continue to cook for about 3 minutes. By now you can find that the oil starts to get separated and float on top. Turn off the flame and transfer it to the serving bowl.
  
   
  
   
• Serve hot as a side for rice, idli, dosa, or any indian bread.

   

Notes | FAQ

- Using freshly crushed garlic and ginger gives the best flavor, instead of using ginger garlic paste.

- Adjust the spiciness (Black peppercorns, Dry red chilli, Green chilli, Red chilli powder) according to your taste.

- Finely chopping of onion, tomato and fully mashing the tomato is important to achieve the right gravy consistency.

- Using the fresh ground masala powder gives the best flavor and aroma to this dish.

This post is sponsored by the Soyfoods Association of North America as part of "National Soyfoods Month". However all views and opinions expressed in this post are my own.

Sending this recipe to the First Blog Anniversary Celebration of Delectable Flavours.