No Oil Curry Making – Black Eyed Peas Curry

Yet it’s in everything and most people can’t even think about cooking without it. You probably guessed that it’s oil. Many people are surprised to learn that it’s easy to cook great food without oil or butter. The thought of cooking without oil can be a little mind-bending if you haven’t done it. With new technologies, even frying is possible without oil…air fryer technology! Well, technically it is not deep fried but just to make end product look like fried with crisp texture.
Being an Indian, my most Indian cooking starts with oil..well, I do use steaming technique a lot but still oil is consumed in almost all prepared food so I started experimenting cooking with very less oil when needed and if possible, skip oil entirely. I found it so much easier to cook without oil compared to what I thought. I haven’t invested in air fryer yet but I am planning to get one. I also use few more utensils like cake pop, waffle, sandwich maker to get crispness in recipes using very less oil/butter.
In this post, I am going to share how one can actually prepare any curry without any oil/butter. Yes, curry is loaded with extra fat of oil/butter/cream and so on. A lot of people think of curry as unhealthy food but it is so easy to make it healthier, specially lentil and beans curries.
In my kitchen, pressure cooker is a must utensil as it makes my life so much easier by cooking food quickly, retaining nutrition and also I can cook without oil! If you don’t own pressure cooker yet, it’s time to invest in one good pressure cooker and you will be spending very less time in the kitchen. Yes, old fashion cooker has come back with new technology and much safer to use than before. If you do not wish to make the following curry recipe in cooker, expect to spend hours in the kitchen.
So let’s begin cooking without oil.
First step I recommend is to soak your beans, lentils, legumes to reduce 40-60% of your cooking time. Some beans, lentils do not require soaking but it is my habit to soak anyway. In this curry recipe, I am using Black Eyed Peas which usually do not require soaking but I still prefer to soak if I plan ahead. I then boil in pressure cooker with salt. For soaked beans, I hear 5-6 whistles which is about 8-10 minutes.

Once the beans are boiled, take out into the same bowl, used for soaking and use the same cooker pot to boil onion(if desired), tomato, ginger, garlic, salt, and Turmeric Powder(Haldi). Hear only 2 whistles to make veggies soft. It takes about 6 minutes.

Let pressure cooker cool down, let all pressure release, open carefully and using hand blender, prepare the gravy.

Spice it up with Red chili powder, Coriander Cumin powder and garam masala.

Ready to add Beans and simmer for another 5 minutes to incorporate all the flavors together.

And you have made the curry without any oil, cream or extra fat…yeah!!! Serve curry with steamed rice or rotis.

How about now watching the whole video instruction to prepare the yummy curry…watching it once is 100 times better than just keep on reading again and again!