This wholesome, healthy green bean and potato curry (Aloo Phali in Urdu) comes together in just 25 minutes and is SO versatile! Green beans are one of those awesome, quick cooking vegetables that make light work of getting dinner on the table FAST.
🥔 Ingredients
Here's a quick run down of the best ingredients to use for this recipe.
- Onion - it's important this is finely diced, and not chopped into large, clunky bits, so the onions can caramelise quicker and soften into the curry better. Given this is a quick recipe, it's essential you don't overlook this!
- Tomato purée - this helps with the colour, as well as ensuring this recipe is quick-cooking. If you can only use fresh, it will increase the cook time by about 4-5 minutes because we'll need to dry out the moisture from the tomato, and the colour won't be as deep as shown in the images.
- Potatoes - any you prefer, diced into bite-sized pieces. You can choose whether you want to peel them.
- Green beans - these are known as 'phali' in Urdu and Hindi, not to be confused with 'gawar ki sabzi'. In this recipe, I've used fresh green beans, chopped to 2-3cm long.
- Spices - most of these are regular appearances in a standard Pakistani curry, however there is the addition of mango powder (aamchoor). I highly recommend this - it adds a delicious but mild burst of tanginess to the curry and makes everything POP. If you don't have this, you can omit it but please, do try to get hold of it!
- Oil, minced garlic, green chillies, fresh coriander - not much to add here.
🥣 Method
As always, the full recipe including complete ingredients list is at the bottom of the post.
We'll start by heating up some oil in a pan over a high heat, then adding in some finely diced onion. Allow this to sauté for 5 minutes.
Add in minced garlic, spices (again, full list at the bottom of the post) + green chillies. Stir through, then add tomato purée. Allow this to sauté for 5 minutes.
Note: we don't want the onions to darken! In fact, we want to keep them lightly coloured, and more caramelised-looking than dark, unlike most standard Pakistani curries. This curry works MUCH better with the whole caramelised onion vibe! So, if your onions and browning too much over a high heat, bring the heat down to a medium.
Next, add in some diced potatoes, and sauté them for 3-5 minutes. Because this recipe is quite quick, these will need to be bite-sized to ensure they cook through.
Next, add some green beans which you've chopped down to 2cm-long. If you're short of time, feel free to skip the chopping - a'la my Phali Gosht recipe. Sauté for 2-3 minutes.
Now, turn the heat to low, cover and cook everything for 8-10 minutes, or until the potatoes are tender.
Stir in some chopped fresh coriander, and your green bean and potato curry is ready!
📽️ Video
If video is more your thing, you're in luck because I have a YouTube video for this recipe. If you haven't already, please do subscribe to my baby YouTube channel whilst you're there!
🫛 Substitutions + variations
Feel free to change up the potato and/or green beans as per your preference. All the other quantities in this recipe will remain the same.
- You can change the potato for any other 'hard' vegetables, such as pumpkin, butternut squash, carrots etc. Cook times will remain the same as the recipe, so long as you chop them up into bite-sized pieces.
- You can substitute the green beans for any other quick-cooking vegetable, such as broccoli, cabbage, peas, capsicum/bell pepper etc.
- You can also add in some chopped leafy greens to the recipe for some added healthful goodness.
🍽️ Serving suggestions
Serve this green bean and potato curry with a roti or paratha, inside a cheese toastie, or alongside some grilled meat - think Pakistani roast dinner!
To serve this alongside another curry, I'd recommend a meaty option such as a Chicken Bhuna, Lamb Bhuna or even a Fish Bhuna. For a vegetarian option, I think my Tadka Dal would go well with this.
I hope you enjoy this recipe. Lots of love, Fatima x
📋 Recipe
Green Bean and Potato Curry | Aloo Phali
Ingredients
- ¼ cup (65 ml) oil
- 1 medium onion finely diced
- 3 cloves minced garlic
- ½ teaspoon chilli flakes
- 1/ teaspoon turmeric
- 1 teaspoon cumin seeds
- ¾ teaspoon coriander powder
- ½ teaspoon mango powder (aamchoor) optional but highly recommended
- 1 ¼ teaspoon salt or to taste
- 2 whole green chillies
- 1 teaspoon tomato puree
- 9 oz (250) potatoes diced into bite sized pieces
- 7 oz (200 g) green beans chopped
- 1-2 tablespoon fresh coriander to garnish
Instructions
- Preheat a pan over a high heat and add the oil. Allow to oil to warm up.
- Add the finely diced onion. Sauté this over a high heat, stirring often, until the onions become translucent and limp - about 5 minutes.
- Add in the minced garlic, all the spices (chilli flakes, turmeric, cumin seeds, coriander powder, mango powder, salt) and the green chillies. Mix through, then add the tomato purée. Continue to sauté this for 5 minutes. We don't want to onions to darken much - this recipe works better when the onions are lighter and are caramelised. You may need to turn the heat down to a medium flame if you find the onions are browning too much.
- Add the diced potatoes. Sauté for 3-5 minutes.
- Add the green beans. Sauté for 2-3 minutes.
- Turn the heat down to low, cover and cook for 8-10 minutes, or until the potatoes are tender.
- Stir in the chopped coriander and serve.
Video
Notes
- If you don't have tomato purée, you can use ½ medium-sized tomato chopped very finely. Using a fresh tomato will mean there will be more moisture in the pan, so you'll need to dry it out before adding the potatoes to get the same consistency as shown.
- Feel free to substitute any other quick cooking vegetable in place of the green beans, such as peas, broccoli, cabbage etc. Similarly, feel free to substitute the potato for any other similar vegetable, such as pumpkin, butternut squash or carrot.
- It's really important that the potatoes are diced evenly into small, bite-sized chunks. If they're cut into large chunks, they will take much longer to cook. If they're not diced evenly, they'll cook unevenly.
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Mary
Yummy
Wendy
Dear Fatima, I had to make a couple of little tweaks for my son’s strength of heat preferences, but I can honestly say that your recipe is AMAZING! This is by far the best curry we have had in years. Thank you so much!
Lisa
I would make a suggestion that you parboil the diced potatoes first. I followed the directions fairly closely (amendments: chopped leeks instead of onion because that was what I had, some chopped bell pepper because that needed to get eaten, added cumin seed and some fenugreek seed to the oil before the leeks, chopped the fresh chiles because I wanted it a little hotter), and while I diced the potatoes fairly small, it took a LONG time for them to cook (these were freshly dug potatoes from my CSA, not a supermarket variety that had been on the shelf for a while). I used more liquid than called for (I used about 1/2 c. chopped home-canned tomatoes as I didn't have puree) but after cooking covered 8-10 minutes the diced potatoes were still really hard. I ended up adding more tomato liquid and water and basically boiling the mixture to cook the potatoes -- about 35 minutes. I had used the same batch of potatoes last night in a pasta dish, and after less than 10 min in boiling water (I cooked them with the pasta) they were falling apart.
But it was tasty and I'll make again -- but will parboil the potatoes first.
Wendy
Yup Lisa - I parboiled the potatoes too and they were perfect.
Kim
We really liked the flavors and textures on this one! I had all the ingredients on hand except whole chiles, which was no big deal. Thank you Fatima!
Emily
Delicious and simple. I substituted spinach for green beans and had this dinner alongside the egg bhuna curry. I will be making this again! I didn't have mango powder so used a teaspoon of mango chutney.
Danni Eldred
DELICIOUS! So quick but so satisfying and full of flavor. Great recipe. I have served it as a flavorful side with spicy baked chicken tenders, have served it was cucumber/radish/tomato raita. Also nice as a side with parathas. Comes together quickly, minimal hands-on work.
Nigel
We tried this recipe with frozen garden peas as a subtitute for Green Beans simply because we were out of Beans and must say we really enjoyed the results that a handful of spices in modest proportion produced. As we both prefer a lot of onions I think next time I will add an extra Onion to the recipe, also we prefer a hotter curry so I tend to substute Thai red hot Chilli's whenever possible so used 2 here.I also added the optional Mango Powder. Overall, the taste was very pleasant, had a nice warmth to it but with no afterburn and the Peas had a pop when eaten. This recipe would be a perfect starter course for a main meal. Overall Fatima has won out again and I have to give this recipe a solid 5 out of 5 for its simpicity, wonderful taste, and easy preparation. I hope others will give this a try and look forward to hearing if anyone decides to make vegetable substitutions and how their meals turned out.
Fatima Cooks
Thank you for your kind words, Nigel. I am really happy you enjoyed this! It is indeed very simple and easy, so easy to overlook it but it definitely pulls its weight!
Paul
Hi Fatima,
Is Gawar the same as Guvar?
If so it one of two types of Indian green beans that I have tried before,the other being Valor. Could I use either of these instead of the green beans?
I have too many potatoes just now so this is a welcome recipe.
Thanks,
Paul:-)
Fatima
Hi Paul - Gawar is different to the green beans I've used here. This is just a standard pack of green beans you can get at Sainsburys, Aldi etc.