This vegan butter chicken is one of my favorite comfort food recipes! It’s super creamy and incredibly rich without using butter! Instead of chicken this vegan butter chicken calls for chickpeas and cauliflower. It’s sooo delicious and pretty easy to make!
I absolutely LOVE Indian food! There are so many delicious flavors going on and I love that they have so many vegetarian dishes. While butter chicken obviously isn’t vegetarian, you can just omit the chicken and still have the amazing mild curry flavors that make this dish so popular! Butter chicken has its roots in Punjabi cuisine and was first made in Delhi in the 1950s. Since then, it became super popular all over the world. No wonder, it’s just soooo good!!
As the name suggests, butter chicken usually calls for butter. Besides, cream can be used in the sauce or also for garnishing. However, you can still make an incredibly creamy curry sauce without the butter. I just used cashew butter to make my vegan butter chicken really creamy and rich. I read that cashew paste is also used in India as a thickener, so this seems like the perfect choice for a vegan version. If you don’t have cashew butter on hand, you can also use almond butter instead.
What You Need For This Vegan Butter Chicken
You can find all of the ingredients you need for this vegan butter chicken in any regular grocery store.
You need:
- cooked chickpeas
- cauliflower
- garlic
- ginger
- garam masala
- cumin
- crushed tomatoes
- cashew butter
- coconut milk
- brown sugar
- one onion
We usually eat the vegan butter chicken along with Basmati or Jasmine rice and garlic naan bread. As always, you can find the full ingredient list and detailed recipe instructions in a separate recipe box at the end of this post.
I hope you like this vegan butter chicken with chickpeas as much as we do around here! It’s the perfect comfort food!
You might also like this easy vegan chickpea curry with potatoes. Or check out my vegetable korma.
Sina
Vegan Butter Chicken with Chickpeas and Cauliflower
Ingredients
- 1 onion, chopped
- 3 cloves of garlic, minced
- 1 teaspoon chopped fresh ginger
- 3 teaspoons garam masala
- 1 teaspoon cumin
- 1 teaspoon brown sugar
- 1 28 oz can crushed tomatoes
- 3 tablespoons cashew butter
- 1 cup canned coconut milk (full fat)
- 1 28 oz can chickpeas (equals 2 1/2 cups cooked chickpeas)
- 2 cups cauliflower florets
- salt, to taste
- black pepper, to taste
Instructions
- Heat some oil in a large pan and sauté the onion for 2-3 minutes. Then add the garlic and the ginger and cook for one more minute. Stir in the garam masala, the brown sugar, and the cumin and cook for another minute until fragrant.
- Then add the crushed tomatoes, the coconut milk, the chickpeas, the cauliflower florets and cook for 10 minutes.
- Stir in the cashew butter and season with salt and pepper.
- Serve over Jasmine or Basmati rice and sprinkle with fresh cilantro.
Great recipe! I added chili pepper, cinnamon, & tomato paste, & that really took it over the top
Thanks! Do you have specific amounts to add, as I love these flavours!
This has been my favorite recipe for the past year and a half. It’s always my go to recipe because it is so simple and packed with so much flavor. I serve it with basmati and some homemade vegan garlic naan. Seriously love this recipe so much, I would give it 10 stars if I could. Thank you for sharing it!!
Delicious and easy to make!! I add a few extra vegetables though…
Hi, this looks great but I’m new to the vegan scene… Is the coconut milk canned or is it like the creamer / carton you get in the milk isle. Sorry…
Hi Danielle,
No need to be sorry! ;-) I should have clarified that in the ingredient list. I used canned coconut milk for this recipe. Hope you like it! :-)
This was even more delicious than the real thing! Great idea with the chickpeas.
In your write up you mention tomato paste, under YOU NEED, but then in the instructions the ingredients and directions don’t mention it.
Oh sorry about that, Andy! Just checked. No tomato paste needed. :-)
Looks very tasty. I will try this recipe at home!