This Indian-inspired cashew sauce smells and tastes delicious! Featuring a mix of warm Indian spices, cashews, and cream or coconut milk, this is a versatile sauce. Pair it with crispy roasted cauliflower as a side – super delicious with the optional toasted coconut topping, or sauce up a Buddha Bowl of brown rice and warm root veggies or chicken.
Ingredients
Ingredients for Indian-Inspired Cashew Sauce
You can make this cashew sauce vegan, with coconut milk or vegetarian, using cream. The rest of the ingredients are identical for both versions: onion, fresh ginger, garlic, garam masala, coriander, cardamom, cinnamon, and cashews.
About Garam Masala
An Indian-derived word, masala means spices or mixture of spices. Garam means hot, so the literal translation of garam masala is “hot spices” — however, it’s not hot in the sense of burn your tongue, but warming to the body. There also isn’t one definitive recipe for garam masala; there may be as many recipes as there are cooks, but for this recipe, we used a store-bought mix that consisted cumin, black pepper, black mustard seed, fenugreek, dill seeds, and coriander.
Choosing Cream or Coconut Milk
If you’re vegan, you’ll want to use coconut milk. If you’re vegetarian, you can use either cream or coconut milk – the choice is up to you. The coconut milk impart a richers, more coconut flavour to the Cashew Sauce, but either way it’s going to be good.
Cashews
We used roasted unsalted cashews. If you have raw cashews, you can toast them in the oven for about 10 minutes or so before adding to the sauce. If you have salted cashews, omit the salt from the recipe, adding it as needed after blending the sauce.
The Process
The overall process of this recipe is pretty straightforward: fry the onions until golden, add the fresh ginger, garlic, and powdered spices and fry until the flavours are mingled together, and then add the cream or coconut cream and cashews and simmer. The final stage is just blending it all together.
This process is very similar to making our Indian-Spiced Spinach (Saag) recipe, where you fry the onions, ginger, garlic and spices for a relatively long time to get a nice deep flavour. Although it does take about 40 minutes total for all the stages, the result is certainly worth it! These two recipes also work really well together if you feel like making an Indian feast. You can make both of them ahead and reheat later, too.
Visual Overview: Making Indian-Inspired Cashew Sauce
Fry the onions until golden brown, about 15 minutes./.
Making Indian-Inspired Cashew Sauce
Add the ginger, garlic, spices, and water. Turn the heat down to low and fry for about 10 minutes.
Making Indian-Inspired Cashew Sauce.
After about 10 minutes, the mixture will look like this.
Making Indian-Inspired Cashew Sauce.
Add the coconut milk or cream and the cashews and simmer on low for about 15 minutes.
Making Indian-Inspired Cashew Sauce.
After 15 minutes, the mixture will look like this:
Making Indian-Inspired Cashew Sauce.
Transfer the sauce mixture to the blender and blend until creamy.
Making Indian-Inspired Cashew Sauce
Tips: Cooking for mixed groups
You can make this vegan, using coconut milk, or vegetarian, using cream.
For an Indian-inspired dinner suitable for mixed groups: Make this cashew sauce and serve over roasted cauliflower (see Recipe Notes) or chicken. Serve with Indian-spiced Spinach (Saag) and 1-Pot Indian Red Lentils (Dal) along with rice, and naan.
Related Recipes
Here are some other recipes for mixed groups:
Recipe Card
Indian-Inspired Cashew Sauce
Ingredients
- 2 tablespoons oil
- 1.5 cups onion, diced
- 1/3 cup ginger, diced
- 3 cloves garlic
- 2 tablespoons garam masala
- 1 teaspoon cardamom
- 1/2 teaspoon coriander
- 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
- 2 tablespoons water
- 1.5 cups cream or coconut milk (We used 12% milk fat cream for the vegetarian version)
- 2/3 cup roasted cashews, unsalted
Toasted Coconut Topping
- .5 cup coconut flakes
- 1/4 cup dates, chopped
- 1/3 cup roasted cashews, chopped
- 1 pinch cardamom
- 1 pinch pepper
Instructions
- In a large heavy pan, heat the oil and then add the diced onions. Fry over medium heat, stirring occasionally, until ovens are medium brown, about 15 minutes.
- Add the ginger, garlic, spices, and water. Turn the heat down to low and cook, stirring occasionally, for about 10 minutes.
- Add the cream or coconut milk and cashews. Turn the heat up a bit until on a low simmer, and simmer, stirring occasionally for another 15 minutes.
- Transfer mixture to blender and blend until creamy.
Optional Toasted Coconut Topping
- Preheat the oven to 350F.
- Spread the coconut on a baking sheet and bake for about 6 minutes, until browning.
- Mix all ingredients together in a small bowl.
This is a staple in our kitchen, with coconut milk. last one over roasted beets, with cod and cilantro. Also made it thicker as veggie dip. Like playing with the spice variations. great recipe. Thank you!
Happy to hear it’s become a staple! Thank you!