Chicken Tikka Masala from Epicurious Reviewed

• Estimated Cooking Time: 45 minutes
• Actual Cooking Time: 52 minutes

Bummer dude, this one took longer than expected. But it was so delicious, that I think it's my favorite recipe of all the recent chicken recipes I've been testing. It does take a bit of work to get the sauce tasting right, but I was pretty proud of myself able to make authentic-tasting Indian food. Next time I'll just make a bunch of sauce and use it on rice, chicken, beef, and whatever else I have around. My only regret from this recipe was not doubling it to make more for the week. Follow along as I make chicken tikka masala!

One thing I didn't really understand was why the chicken was marinated in yogurt. That didn't seem to make sense, or have any influence on the flavor. I think normal salt and pepper seasoning would be fine. The original recipe also asked me to tenderize the meat, but I wanted to save on time so I skipped tha step.

See? Doesn't that look a bit weird? I don't know how the yogurt mixture contributes to flavor at all.

Another shot of the chicken cooking in oil with the yogurt garlic mixture marinade.

Here's the spices you need. Simple, but in proper proportions they taste AMAZING! I think the cardamom and cumin make a big difference, but next time I might add more cayenne pepper to spice things up a bit.

Start by sautéing your onions of course.

Here's the spice mixture. Doesn't look like much here, but enough to make a decent amount of sauce as you'll see below.

This is the second Indian recipe like this I've made where you fry the spices with onions (last time was with ginger). For some reason it makes me scared the spices will burn, but I guess not.

Here's the initial sauce. I used “diced” tomatoes instead of tomato paste. The sauce was a little watery, so I used my immersion blender to chop things up, then cooked it a bit longer to thicken the sauce.

Doesn't that look nicer?

Here's the sauce poured over the chicken. Wow. Looks just like at the restaurant!

This time I actually took the time to make some indian-style rice. Glad I did. This was such a good recipe. In fact, I'm going to make some more today after I publish this blog post.