Chicken and 3 bean curry

At the time of writing this recipe we’re only a few weeks away from Christmas Day.

Every year I seem to have more jobs to get done and this is the time of year that I’m likely to be more relaxed than I should be about my food.

So to combat that I’ve batch cooked a few things for the freezer including this recipe.

I have tasty, lean dishes to fall back on when time is short.

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his is one of the many lean recipes that I’ve created where flavour and simplicity are key. There are hundreds of lean recipes in my app The Lean Cook with adjustable calories and macros.

Ingredients for 4 servings

500 g	chicken breast
300 g	chicken thighs, boneless and skinless
200 g	lentils, tinned, drained weight
200 g	chickpeas, tinned, drained weight
200 g	cannellini beans, tinned, drained weight
80 g	onions, chopped
12 g	coconut oil
1	chicken stock cube
100 ml	boiling water
4 tbsp	balti paste
120 g	paneer
200 g	spinach
	salt and pepper

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Method

• Pre-heat your oven to 130°C fan/300°F.
• Cut the chicken breast into large chunks and the chicken thighs into 15mm strips before placing them into an ovenproof dish along with the chickpeas, lentils and beans.
• Put a medium frying pan onto the heat and add your coconut oil.
• When it has melted add the chopped onion and fry these for a few minutes to soften.
• Add the balti paste to the pan and cook out the paste for approximately 1 minute before pouring this into the ovenproof dish.
• Sprinkle the stock cube over the mixture and pour on the boiling water before mixing everything thoroughly together with a spoon.
• Cover the ovenproof dish with foil and place this into the oven for 4 hours.
• As the curry approaches being in the oven for 4 hours, cut the paneer into cubes and set aside.
• Put a frying pan onto a medium heat and take a few minutes to wilt the spinach, placing it either on kitchen paper or in a sieve to drain the residual water.
• Remove the curry from the oven, stir through the paneer and wilted spinach before returning it to the oven for a final hour.
• After the hour is up, remove the ovenproof dish from the oven and serve.

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Recipe Notes

• If your slow cooker is large enough, feel free to use that instead of oven cooking.
• I like to use low salt stock cubes.
• If you don’t have the specified beans in your pantry, use what you have. This is a great dish to add what you have to hand.
• Remember to completely cool the curry before you freeze it.
• The balti paste I used for this recipe was Patak’s Balti Paste.

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