Chicken Angara (North Indian Smoky Creamy Curry)

This is a vegan version of rich, smoky Indian chicken angara. This restaurant-style curry has an aromatic chili sauce with amazing, fiery flavors! Serve with naan, flatbread, or rice or over a baked potato for a delicious meal. It is gluten-free with nut-free and soy-free options.

Chicken angara is a popular dish in some North Indian restaurants. It has a thick sauce made with fried onion, yogurt, lots of spices, and either dried whole Kashmiri chilis, regular Indian chilies, or Kashmiri chili powder. The chilis add to the fiery red color of the sauce as well as to the heat.

Angar means fire, and you’re incorporating fire into this dish by adding a lot of heat and color from the Kashmiri chilis and smoking it with some live fire at the end. The signature smoky flavor is incorporated using a smoking food-safe charcoal. But We smoke it using a cinnamon stick. Just heat the cinnamon stick (or charcoal) until it’s red hot, then put it in a heat-safe ramekin, drizzle with a little bit of oil. The ramekin actually goes into the pan of finished chicken angara, and you cover the pan with the lid, so the smoke infuses the dish.

This is another recipe in my series where I veganize traditionally meat-heavy Indian dishes. Check out my recipes for Salli Boti (western Indian curry with potato sticks), Rara Chicken (North Indian onion cardamom curry), Goan Peri peri Chikin tofu, and Pahadi curry (Mountain onion pepper curry), for more from this series.

As with lots of Indian curries, the flavor is in the sauce, so you can use your plant-based protein of choice and it will still taste absolutely delicious. If you don’t want to use tofu, you can use chickpea tofu, chickpeas or other white beans, veggies, vegan chicken, or seitan. And as with many restaurant-style curries, it’s about patience in letting everything toast and toast really well at each step and letting the flavors develop! Let’s make this fantastic tofu Angara!