When it comes to eating with a dietary restriction, whether that is adhering to a vegan or vegetarian diet or whether you cannot digest lipids, it can be incredibly difficult to try and find foods that work for you.

More often than not, once you find a recipe that works for you, you will want to stick to it as much as possible. However, this can get incredibly mundane after a while. After all, who wants to eat the same selection of dishes forever?

Depending on how used to your diet you are, it can be a daunting task to try and find a dish that works with your diet. To find a dish that works for you, you are going to want to work on finding dishes that are easy to make in accordance with your diet. For example, if you are working with a vegetarian (and in some cases, a vegan) diet and you are looking for a flavorful dinner, you may want to consider looking at curries.

Curries are about as broad a category as stews are. Different places around the world have their own interpretations of what curry is and what ingredients should be included. Some people prefer their curries to be filled to the brim with meats, while other people are more than happy to create a fiery vegetable curry dish.

Some dishes can also be converted into a vegan-friendly dish without many extra steps, meaning that you will easily be able to provide food for your whole family when you know how to make curry. First things first though, it is important for you to have a good understanding of where curry comes from and what you can do to make it unique to you and your diet.

Where Does Curry Come From?

Curry is a dish that you can find practically everywhere. In the grocery store, there are plenty of different curry powders and pastes that you can rely on as a base. There are recipes for unique twists on curry all over the web. However, if you are looking for where curry first started, then you will want to look toward India.

While there are plenty of other countries where curry is a major part of the food culture, curry originated in India and spread out from there. After all, India has a number of native spices that are extremely prominent in curry recipes, making it no surprise that curry comes from here. Commonly, Indian curries will make use of turmeric, cumin, coriander, and ginger.

Across the world, curries have become a staple in other countries as well. The most prominent of which include the islands that make up Southeastern Asia, mainland Southeastern Asia, and Oceania. Rather than being made as a “sauce” that is served over other foods, these dishes will usually use coconut milk (making it more prone to being vegan-friendly) and pastes made from spices to make it a thick topping to put over rice.

While curry can be made to go alongside meats, poultry, and seafood, there are many places and cultures that will make the curry entirely vegetarian in adherence to ethical and/or religious beliefs. This goes to show that making curry into a vegetarian dish is an incredibly easy task and you will be able to find a plethora of vegetarian curry recipes out there to choose from, with no two recipes being exactly the same.

How Do You Make It Vegetarian?

Now that you know a little bit more about where curry came from and how it came to be such a staple in some parts of the world, you may have a better idea as to how you can turn your curry dish into a vegetarian-friendly meal. The easiest way to get this done is to search for recipes that are made naturally vegetarian.

Depending on where you are looking for curry ingredients, you may need to exercise some caution. Certain types of curry paste are flavored with fish, shrimp, or crab to add more flavoring. If you can, you should purchase your curry ingredients from places that are vegetarian-friendly or you should make sure to double-check the ingredients to keep it in line with what you can eat.

Another one of the major substitutions you will have to make is that many curry recipes will call for you to use broth. However, this is easily circumvented by replacing any chicken or beef broth requirements with a high-quality vegetable broth. In some cases, you may even want to consider using a vegan-friendly beef-flavored vegetable broth if you want to add that meaty flavor into the mix. This is one of the easiest substitutions that you will have to make, as it is often only replacing the broth with a vegetarian-friendly one.

Finally, the last one is purely up to preference. Some people prefer to add tofu to their curry to replicate adding meat to the dish. For this, you may need to do some research on which types of tofu would be able to absorb the curry flavoring the best while still providing the texture that you want.

Many people recommend using an extra-firm variant of tofu for this, as it provides the best texture for a curry dish. With that being said, adding tofu is not required in most recipes and adding it in is completely up to you depending on your tastes in curry.

What Are Some Additions You Can Make to Your Curry?

When it comes to making your curry dish your own, you may not know where to start. The best way to get started creating your own curry dish is to rely on the recipes that you know are good and adding onto those with the foods that you think would go best.

For instance, some people enjoy their curry sauces to be thick, and this can be somewhat hard to recreate. One thing that you could do to make your curry dish unique is add a hint of peanut butter not only to thicken the curry sauce, but to add that nutty undertone to round out the flavor of your curry. Another thing that you could consider doing is using ingredients that you may not traditionally see in most curries, such as spinach. In fact, spinach and chickpea curry is surprisingly popular.

How Do You Make Chickpea and Spinach Curry?

To make chickpea and spinach curry, you will first want to work on getting all of the ingredients to make it. Of course, you are going to need traditional curry spices, chickpeas, and spinach. You will also need to get some lemon juice, garam masala, sugar, garlic, cilantro (or coriander as an alternative), and some onions to add to the flavor of the curry.

From there, you will want to begin working with the recipe’s directions to create your brand new curry dish. Making curry is a fairly simple task, but as with any other new recipe, you should try and make sure that you follow the instructions before you make changes. This will help you get a good idea of what you should be changing the next time you make your curry.

Before you know it, you will have a brand new dish to try and you will be able to open up your mind to a plethora of new vegetarian-friendly recipes of curry.