Chicken Curry

So some time ago I posted a recipe for “curry geschnetzltes” as a variant on “regular” geschnetzltes, but in the end I didn’t feel I had my proportions quite right, and have gone back to making “regular” chicken curry. It is a huge hit around here, so I am finally getting around to typing up the recipe so that when my son, who periodically expresses interest in making it, finally is ready to act on that interest, “my” version is here.

This makes enough for, well, a family with hungry teenagers. Obviously, you can do the math to scale it down.

Ingredients

1.5 – 1.75 lbs chicken breast or (preferred) thighs (you could probably substitute pork), cut into bite-size pieces

1 onion, diced

2 cans coconut milk

1/4 cup tomato paste

bunch of frozen or fresh spinach

4 tsp curry powder

1 1/2 tsp salt

Steps

Brown chicken and onion in oil. This is a lot of chicken and onion, so I use my extra-large skillet, and try to be coordinated enough to saute the onion while I’m cutting up the chicken, then push it to the side and brown half the chicken while I’m still working on the other half, then push that to the side (or remove it) to brown the rest.

Add the curry powder and salt. The original recipe says to add this while browning the meat and to be perfectly honest, I don’t know if it matters for the flavor or not. Sometimes I do, sometimes I just add it later because it’s a lot more fuss to deal with the curry powder sticking to the pan.

Deglaze the skillet with 1 can of coconut milk — that is, use a wooden spoon or a metal spatula to scrape the browned bits off the bottom of the pan. Then add the second in, and use a spatula to get all of the creamier coconut milk out of the can. Add the tomato paste and cook until the sauce has thickened.

When the sauce has mostly thickened, add in the spinach. How much spinach is a bit a matter of how much you have and how aggressive you want to be with making your kids eat spinach.

How thick is thick? It’s at your discretion, of course, and I think the original recipe is “not particularly thick” based on its statement of how long it takes — I let it boil for 10 minutes or so. And there are cans of what’s labelled “coconut cream” which I’ve never tried (it’s more like $3 rather than $2) but I presume are just thicker.

Serve with rice. (Or to be keto-y, with cauliflower.)

Yum!