Dishes that make the leap from being cooked in people’s kitchens to being photographed and posted and shared online enough times to become internet phenomena often involve some sort of gimmick. These are recipes so easy that making them feels akin to partaking in trickery. There was the single-ingredient banana “ice cream” a handful of years ago, or Marcella Hazan’s hands-off tomato-butter spaghetti sauce. Such dishes are delicious, yet come with the suspicious sense that one is somehow circumventing the cooking process.
That’s why it’s heartening to see a more involved, yet still relatively simple, dish get some attention. Alison Roman’s recipe for chickpea stew with coconut and turmeric first appeared on The New York Times in late November, and in the ensuing months the Dining In author’s hearty vegan meal has been cooked and photographed and shared thousands of times online. (This isn’t the first instance of one of Roman’s recipes taking off in this way. Last year, her chocolate chunk shortbread cookies were similarly inescapable.) The recipe—or, #TheStew—isn’t that far off from others that Roman and fellow New York Times columnist Melissa Clark are in the habit of creating. The dish is substantive and relatively healthy; it doesn’t take long to prepare; and most importantly, it tastes good. The coconut milk lends a creaminess, the Indian flavors a comforting warmth, to what might otherwise come across as ascetic winter fare.
But no online recipe gets made this many times without modifications from home cooks—Roman herself welcomes such adjustments—and this one has a number worth doing. Perhaps therein lies the recipe’s appeal: how flexible it is, how it encourages people to make it their own.
In order of appearance, here are the combined edits two A.V. Club copy editors suggest making to Alison Roman’s Chickpea Stew with Coconut and Turmeric:
- Add jalapeño
- Add more spices
- Only use one can of coconut milk
- Crisp the garnish chickpeas separately
- Add quinoa
- Make the (optional) pita as good as the rest
- Add lime before serving
Add jalapeño
It was surprising to see jalapeño missing from the original recipe, given the other ingredients, namely the onions, ginger, and garlic. We suggest mincing the pepper, and including as much of the ribs and as many of the seeds according to how spicy you want it. Regardless, the heat that a jalapeño will lend to the dish will be balanced by the coconut milk, so one pepper will never make it too spicy. Add along with the garlic, onion, and ginger.
Add more spices
Some people in the comments section on the original recipe have recommended adding garam masala or curry powder. We do, too. Somewhere in the teaspoon range. Add with the turmeric.
Only use one can of coconut milk
If you’d like to cut down on the fat content, would like a looser stew, or want to add quinoa later, you can certainly get by with only one can of coconut milk. As with the spice level, this has to do with personal preference. We’ve made it both ways, and both are delicious.
Crisp the garnish chickpeas separately
This one is less preference than science. The chickpeas don’t crisp when sautéed along with the onion mixture—there’s too much moisture from the aromatics—so if you’d actually like the cup of garnish chickpeas to be crunchy, crisp them up in a separate, small sauté pan. We think it’s worth the extra effort in order to vary the dish’s texture.
Add quinoa
Maybe you don’t have naan or pita or other flatbread around to serve with the dish and want a little something in its place, or maybe you just like having all of your food together in one big pile. Either way, adding quinoa adds protein. Doing so also thickens the dish, which means you probably don’t need that second can of coconut milk. If using, add a cup of quinoa after you’ve added the coconut milk and it’s all been simmering for about 15 minutes.
Make the (optional) pita as good as the rest
Roman adds the optional “toasted pita, lavash, or other flatbread” to go with the stew. We toasted our pita, which was especially tasty when used to scoop up the stew. Brush a thin layer of olive oil onto the bread, add more spices—we sprinkled on a sweet curry powder and za’atar—then slice into eighths and spread out on a rimming baking sheet. Put it in a hot oven (450 degrees or thereabouts) for five minutes for crispy edges.
Add lime before serving
The dish cries out for more acid than just the yogurt. Plus, limes are cheap, and while scurvy would be an incredibly metal disease to contract in 2019, the street cred probably isn’t worth the bleeding gums. Just before serving, squeeze as much fresh lime juice on top as you want or need.
39 Comments
Adding cooked quinoa to any stew I heartily endorse. I use it rather than crackers in my chili.
I never really got into quinoa–I like an actual grain, with more bite–but can see it if the stew is soupier than you’d like. But if it’s to add protein, the chickpeas already have plenty.
I like black daal (takes a long time to cook) and/or bular (short time to cook) to add texture/thickness/heartiness to my chili if I’m trying to go the healthy route.
Man, they call quinoa a tracer food for a reason. I can tell EXACTLY how long it took to get through my digestive tract.
Add Tons of Oreo Filling
There isn’t a recipe around that can’t be improved by adding copious globs of sweet, sweet Oreo filling. In fact, don’t even bother with the chickpeas and other bullshit ingredients; they would just get in the way. Serve without utensils.
I made this dish with marbles and Oreo filling and my guests loved it.
I once registered for some recipe blog somewhere to reply to someone who asked ‘can I substitute chicken for turkey in this recipe’ with ‘No, you’ll create a deadly poison’.
My favorite was the person on the King Arthur website who gave their Vanilla Biscotti 1 star for not tasting like lemons.
I see the person who threw their hot drink at me because the americano they ordered didn’t taste like a Frappuccino got internet access.
I’d like to believe that that person went around telling people “Did you know that substituting chicken for turkey in a recipe will create a deadly poison?”
I truly hope so.
I plugged this into MyFitnessPal and at 4 servings for the recipe it is 930 calories and 77 grams of fat per bowl! Are these calculations way off? Do you think using lowfat coconut milk would work as well?
That doesn’t sound that far off. Adding a ton of something that is mostly fat to a recipe like butter/oil/coconut milk is going to also add a ton of calories. This recipe makes sense for people who are vegan or trying to reduce animal product consumption, but still want comfort food. It’s probably not the best for a moderate-calorie weeknight meal as written.As for the lowfat coconut milk, I guess you could try it! You might also try subbing some of the coconut milk for stock of some kind (vegetable, or chicken if you are not vegetarian).
I must be a weirdo, because I’m mostly vegetarian and yet I do not like chickpeas in a soup or stew. Hummus? Yes! Falafel? Yes! On a salad? Yes! In a hot dish? NOPE. To me, there’s something about the texture that just doesn’t meld with, or melt into, aromatics and broth the way that lentils an other beans do. They just aggressively hold their ground and do their own thing.
I made this, and found it kind of Blah. So I dumped in shredded cheddar and peanut butter. Became real thick and I liked the end result.
Me too! But I kinda think it’s something I should get over… I keep trying to put them in chilli hoping they’ll be like the beans. But they’re not.
Huh, I had a sausage and kale soup that handled chickpeas very well recently. Maybe it’s the broth being used, obviously the one I had wasn’t vegetarian but the dish’s vegetable ingredients did party well together.
I’m not saying you can’t enjoy chickpea stew or its variants. I’m saying I find chickpeas too assertive in texture in those contexts. If you like chickpeas in hot dishes, I say — carry on! They are so very good for you and also inexpensive.
So no Chana Masala? You poor thing, you!
I can eat chana masala, but I much MUCH prefer black dal as a legume Indian dish. Again, I’m not against chickpeas in hot dishes for those who enjoy them. It’s a personal preference.
I have found that I really like them when they’ve been thoroughly rinsed and baked in the oven. They lose that… taste? That weird canned taste and aggressive texture. It also helps to rub all the skins off.
Tahini Think deconstructed hummus, in this case the flavours not only go together so well but the tahini thickens the broth so the chickpeas can’t roll away when you are chasing them.
Pomegranate molasses Lime is all very well but pomegranate and lime would be better.
Sage A few teaspoonsful of dried or 10-20 chopped fresh leaves really perks up a chickpea dish. I don’t use it in much else but it just goes so well with anything chickpea-related. Dried tomato paste Everything is better with the umami of tomato in the broth.Methi Rather than the greens they suggest I would use fenugreek leaf, nothing compares for the flavour.
Needs cumin.
Needs chicken
Probably already tastes like it.
Does it? Chickpeas and another protein makes for a really heavy dish. The only one I make uses a small amount of Italian sausage and that’s on the verge of too heavy and works just as well without it. I think chicken in this dish would just be a bit much.
Up next, millenials ruin chickpeas…
I think Jalapenos missed the cut because they’re kind of a Meso/South-American thing… other hot peppers more aligned with Indian, Middle-Eastern, or Mediterranean cuisine would be more likely to be used (like the red pepper flakes in the original.) I love ‘em in tons of stuff, but I get why they may not have been used.
Add 1/2 lb of thinly sliced medium rare flank steak.
Quinoa doesn’t make ANYTHING taste better
The original recipe would be handy, Because at NYT you need an account to see it.
Before going vegan, watch ex-vegan youtubes and then decide if it’s for you. At the very least be ready to give up if you have issues. It’s a very radical diet, much more than you would think. There are chickens who genetically don’t care about their own eggs. And just eggs can be enough to avoid health issues and serious cravings.And keep in mind that farm animals from a good farm have a pretty good life and a quick death compared to what happens in the wild: horrible, lingering deaths, being literally eaten alive (the BBC doesn’t show the reality, but youtube does “eaten alive wild”). Even lions succumb to internal parasites when they get old, which is why the gamekeepers shoot them.
I’m not a vegan, but one can also eat vegan meals sometimes (like this dish) without being a vegan.In fact if you are going to get your meat and/or dairy from a “good farm”, you’ll probably still need to incorporate some vegan meals if you don’t want your grocery bill to be hundreds of dollars for one person.
Personally, I’d add some butternut squash, zucchini or sweet potato (depending on my mood/fridge),but as a vegetarian I tend to load my recipes with veggies.
First, take the chick peas out, and replace with something edible.
Scurvy? Incredibly metal, you say?My best friend was – briefly – in this band:
Did I miss something in the article, or was there no actual explanation for why this particular recipe went viral?
There is something incredibly frustrating about writing regarding a recipe that is locked behind a paywall. Cool, cool. Nice article. Would like to be able to see the original recipe.
Dining In is a solid cookbook, that offers a lot of great recipes. There are often variations like this included in the book, like the page on peach pie. While I haven’t seen this recipe slap me in the face yet for some reason, I’ll have to check it out because I’m always up for a good, hearty, vegan/vegetarian stew, especially in the winter.