While I do own a few cooking gadgets, I usually prefer to do things the old-fashioned way- using my knife, chopping board, pans and wooden spoon to help me create tasty daily meals for my family, as well as for my work and this site too. I love the process of cooking, but that doesn’t mean I’m not always looking for faster ways to do things! When the team at Crock-Pot Australia-New Zealand wrote recently asking if I’d like to trial their newly released Express Crock Multi-Cooker I jumped at the chance to give it a whirl. I’ve heard so many great things about pressure cookers and having a machine with 12 different cooking functions from sautéing, to slow cooking AND pressure cooking sounded like the perfect gadget to help me out when I’m in my mid-week dinner funk trying to multi-task like crazy and wishing I had a little extra time up my sleeve to do things with my family, instead of being tied up in the kitchen all the time.
If you’re a family like mine who has some members who are vegetarian and others (well, one) who aren’t, you are often stuck cooking two different meals every night. This is such a great way to help ease some of that burden. And while I’ve fully embraced cooking things like pulled beef for the husband in only 25 minutes (something that would usually take 2-3 hours of cooking), it’s also awesome for cooking plant-based meals as well. Legumes can be cooked in no time at all and curries like this one I’m sharing today, can be cooked in 5 minutes flat. No joke. 5 minutes cooking time is actually all that’s required (excluding the 5 minutes of time to cook out the curry paste first… but still 10 minutes total cooking time is pretty impressive!).
Other than the supper speedy cooking times when using the pressure cooker function, I love that you can sauté directly in the Crock-Pot too. It’s something I’ve often wished for when using my old slow cooker. Not only does it speed things up, but it also means one pot cooking… and only one thing to clean!
This curry is loosely based on one I shared in my second cookbook and while I’ve used Spring vegetables you really can add just about any vegetable to this base curry sauce to produce something really simple, packed with flavour and most of all, nourishing and delicious!
I’ve used broccoli and frozen peas here, but you can add a combination of whatever spring vegetables you may have at hand. Cauliflower and asparagus would also be great, as would shredded silverbeet (chard). For a vegan option, you could use coconut yoghurt in place of regular and use olive oil not ghee.
Serves 4 with rice
1 green chilli, ends trimmed and roughly chopped (de-seed if less heat is desired)
2 onions, peeled and roughly chopped
1 tablespoon grated ginger
2 cloves garlic, peeled
30g (1/4 cup) raw cashew nuts
1 1/2 teaspoons fine sea salt
2 teaspoons ground coriander
1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
1/2 teaspoon ground turmeric
1/4 teaspoon ground cardamom
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
3 tablespoons ghee/olive oil
2 medium heads of broccoli, cut into bite-sized florets (peel the stalk and use this too)
1 cup frozen peas, no need to defrost
150g (1/2 cup) plain unsweetened yoghurt mixed with 2 teaspoons chickpea (chana, besan) flour
Cooked basmati rice, coriander leaves, tomato chutney and toasted cashew nuts, to serve
Place the chilli, onion, ginger, garlic, cashews, salt and spices into a small food processor or blender and blend to form a smooth paste.
Set crock-pot to brown/sauté mode for 5 minutes, once it’s heated, add ghee/oil and spice paste. Cook, stirring often until the crock-pot turns off. Add 250ml (1 cup) cold water, broccoli, peas and yoghurt mixture and give it a good stir and secure the lid properly. Press pressure cooker button and adjust time to 5 minutes, then push start. The cooker will take about 10 minutes to come up to pressure then will automatically switch to cook under pressure for 5 minutes. Once finished, wait 1 minute before carefully using the quick release valve to release the pressure. When the steam has stopped, it’s safe to open the lid. Serve curry with cooked basmati rice, coriander leaves, toasted cashews and your favourite tomato chutney.
This post is sponsored by Crock-Pot. As always, all views are my own. Thank you for supporting the companies who allow me to bring you real food recipes every week.
8 Responses
This looks so delicious and just what I feel like eating today! Thanks a lot Emma xo
You’re so welcome love x
Thank you for thi! Will definitely try this or a variation of it – I was just wondering, what happens to the 1/4 cup of raw Cashews? Do they go into the paste?
Eeep! Thanks for pointing that out! Yes, they go into the paste with the chilli, garlic etc. Will amend now, thank you x
Your curry sauces are the best:)
Also i never under stood the mess half your kitchen up to throw everything in a crock pot concept to save time ha.Nice feature to be able to saute!
Thanks lovely 🙂 And I totally agree, one-pot cooking is what we’re after! The saute function on this Crock-pot is a game-changer!
easy to make curry… thanks for sharing quikly make recpie
You’re welcome! x