This creamy and warmly spiced butternut squash curry is so comforting and delicious. With tender roasted butternut squash, a rich curry sauce and fresh kale, this is the perfect vegan dinner for the chilly season!

A thick roasted butternut squash curry in a white bowl.

Table of Contents

Ingredient tips
Step by step
Variations and substitutions
Serving
Storage
More vegan butternut squash recipes
📖 Recipe

Butternut squash is one of our favourite autumn/winter veggies. There’s something about its natural sweetness and its tender and creamy texture that makes it a delicious ingredient in many dishes.

It works brilliantly in our vegan butternut squash risotto, and makes wonderful butternut squash soup too. But for a cosy and comforting dinner, you can’t beat this vegan butternut squash curry!

For this recipe, we like to roast the butternut squash first. This brings out more of its sweet and nutty flavour. In the meantime, you can start cooking the delicious curry sauce!

Ingredient tips

Here’s what you’ll need for this yummy vegan butternut squash curry recipe:

Ingredients for butternut squash curry on a wooden surface.

Butternut squash - To choose a ripe butternut, look for an even and matte, dark beige skin with no green. You can also choose a squash that seems heavy for its size, when compared to others.

Onion, garlic and ginger - This classic trio of ingredients provides the deep base flavour for the curry.

Spices - For this recipe we use hearty and warming spices to make a rich, but not overly hot, curry sauce. We use medium curry powder, whole cumin seeds, turmeric and mild chilli powder. Garam masala, a traditional and aromatic Indian spice blend, is added towards the end of cooking.

Coconut milk - We like to use full fat organic coconut milk for the richest flavour.

Chopped tomatoes - We mostly use organic chopped tomatoes from a can. If fresh tomatoes are in season, then you can substitute 2 cups or 400g chopped tomatoes for 1 can of chopped tomatoes.

Vegetable stock or broth - We use vegetable bouillon powder to make our stock. It’s quick and convenient.

Peanut butter - This adds a delicious extra creaminess to the curry sauce, and offsets the sweetness of the squash beautifully. We recommend a natural peanut butter containing just peanuts.

Kale - For a green and nutritious boost we like to add in some chopped kale at the end of cooking.

Step by step

Here's a visual overview of how to make this butternut squash curry. You'll find the full recipe and quantities at the end of the post.

Cubes of butternut squash on a roasting tray.

Step 1 - Roast the cubed squash, lightly coated in vegetable oil, in the oven at 200℃ (390℉) fan, for 30 minutes.

Frying whole cumin seeds in oil in a frying pan.

Step 2 - In a large frying pan, fry the cumin seeds in vegetable oil on medium-high heat for 30 seconds.

Step 3 - Add the onions to the pan and sauté on medium heat for about 10 minutes until soft and beginning to brown.

Stirring in ginger and garlic to sauteed onions in a pan.

Step 4 - Add the garlic and ginger and sauté for 2 more minutes.

Adding spices to a mixture of fried onion, garlic and ginger.

Step 5 - Stir in the curry powder, chili powder, turmeric and salt and fry for 30 seconds.

Stirring in tinned tomatoes to the curry sauce.

Step 6 - Add the chopped tomatoes, combine and simmer on medium-high heat for 5 - 10 minutes.

Tomato and coconut curry sauce bubbling in a pan.

Step 7 - Stir in the coconut milk and simmer for another 5 - 10 minutes to thicken the curry sauce.

Step 8 - Add the washed and chopped kale, stir in and cook for 2 minutes.

Stirring in the roasted butternut squash and garam masala to the curry sauce.

Step 9 - Finally, stir in the roasted butternut squash and garam masala.

Variations and substitutions

To add some extra protein to the curry, you can add a can of chickpeas or lentils towards the end of cooking the sauce.

This butternut squash curry is gluten free, as long as you use vegetable stock, spice mixes and other ingredients that don’t contain gluten.

Instead making this butternut squash curry with kale, you can use spinach leaves or other seasonal greens such as chard. As spinach cooks down quicker than kale, cook it for about 1 minute less or until has wilted down.

Cubes of roasted butternut squash and dark green kale in a thick orange coloured curry sauce.

Serving

So, what goes great with this roasted butternut squash curry?

Our favourite way to garnish this curry is with some extra crunchy ingredients on top - toasted peanuts, flaked almonds or coconut chips work great.

Fresh herbs, such as coriander leaves / cilantro or mint, and a lime wedge are also a refreshing addition.

Serve the curry alongside some brown rice or quinoa for a higher protein accompaniment.

As a side dish we love to make our vegan naan breads or these gluten free red lentil flatbreads.

A fork digs into the vegan butternut squash curry.

Storage

Leftovers can be stored covered in the fridge for up to 3 days. Reheat in a pan on the stove, stirring occasionally until piping hot.

Can I freeze curry?

Yes, we love making extra curry to freeze or freezing leftovers for a quick and easy meal! It is possible that freezing curries containing coconut milk can affect the texture, but we’ve personally never had an issue with that.

Simply leave the curry to cool, transfer to an airtight container and freeze for up to 3 months. Defrost overnight in the fridge, or in the microwave and reheat until piping hot.

Cubes of roasted butternut squash in a thick and creamy curry sauce, topped with herbs and toasted coconut.

More vegan butternut squash recipes

We hope you enjoy this vegan butternut squash curry! If you’ve got leftover squash, or want to make the most of butternut squash season, give these a try:

Lentil Risotto with Butternut Squash

Vegan Butternut Squash Risotto

Or use it to make our yummy Vegan Pumpkin Gnocchi

📖 Recipe

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