Sweet Potato Curry with Lentils, Tomatoes and Coconut Milk

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This curry is simply fantastic - delicious, spicy, warming, super-easy to make and even better when reheated. You can eat it all year round, but it is particularly good as a comfort food in autumn and winter. The long cooked sweet potatoes and coconut milk give it a great creaminess, while the sweet potatoes themselves and the lentils keep it from getting too mushy. The fact that it is vegan is more of a coincidence.

Although curry is naturally spicy, it is not necessarily hot, making it suitable for children or those who are sensitive to spices. Of course, if you prefer it a little hotter, don’t worry: you can vary the spices that are fried in oil at the beginning and adjust the dish to your taste. You can also replace the green lentils with beluga lentils: This will give you a bit more bite.

I got the idea for this curry from a recipe on Deliciously Ella - unfortunately it has since disappeared from their website, so I had to reconstruct it from memory and the internet.

Recipe #

Sweet potato curry with lentils, tomatoes and coconut milk

60 minutes

2 portions

Ingredients #

• 1 teaspoon each of cumin and turmeric
• 25 ml oil
• 1 onion
• 2 cloves garlic
• 200 g sweet potatoes
• 120 g green lentils
• 300 ml coconut milk
• 1/2 tin of tomatoes (200 g)
• 10 g coriander (fresh)
• 2 tsp salt
• about 20 ml lemon juice
• as a side dish: about 120 g rice

Directions #

1. Preheat the oven to 180°C fan.
2. Chop the onion and garlic finely. Peel the sweet potato and cut into large cubes (about 1-2cm).
3. Heat a little oil in an ovenproof frying pan. Sauté the cumin and turmeric for about a minute, then add the diced onion and sauté until translucent. Add the garlic and fry.
4. When the onion and garlic are no longer raw, add the sweet potato cubes to the pan and fry briefly. Then add the coconut milk and tinned tomatoes. Season generously with salt, as the sweet potatoes absorb a lot of salt.
5. Rinse the lentils and add to the roasting dish. Cover and place in the oven. Bake for 45-60 minutes or until the sweet potatoes are tender.
6. Meanwhile, cook the rice with double the amount of water and a pinch of salt.
7. When the sweet potatoes are cooked, season with salt and lemon juice and serve with the rice and coriander.

If you don’t have a roasting pan, you can cook the curry in a large frying pan on a low heat for the same amount of time.

Carbon Footprint #

In total, two portions of sweet potato curry with lentils, tomatoes and coconut milk have an estimated carbon footprint of 2075 g.

This ranks it number 39 out of 53 recipes published on the blog so far in terms of estimated carbon footprint.

Compared to reference recipes with meat, such as lasagne or schnitzel with potato salad, this corresponds to around 50% less CO₂ emissions to make this curry. (And the way, it tastes fantastic too!) Unlike the reference recipes using meat recipes, you can see that for each ingredient the difference between the percentage by weight and the emission percentage is quite small. Simply put put, none of the ingredients has a negative impact on the CO₂ balance.

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