Crockpost Chicken and Veggie Tikka Masala

I read this recipe for Chicken Tikka Masala in Outpost's e-newsletter a few weeks ago (it's housed on their recipes page) and thought it looked great. For whatever reason, however, I didn't save it and forgot all about it. Last week, a co-worker was talking about a crockpot Indian recipe she came across and sent it out--turns out it was the same one! (Fun fact: surveys have found that chicken tikka masala is the most popular dish in British restaurants. Another fun fact: I spent a semester in London when I was in college and never had Indian food. I'm ashamed of it now!)



The recipe calls for a lot of stuff, but it's really easy--and turns out splendidly. We did just a few things differently to work with what we had:

-Instead of 2 lbs. of chicken thighs, I used 1 chicken breast, 1 drained can of chickpeas and 4 small potatoes, peeled and cubed.
-I didn't use cilantro (didn't want to buy a huge bunch just for garnish).


-Instead of stringing the cardamom pods together or using cheesecloth, we used the tea infuser I have. (By the way, you can buy them at Spice House if you're looking for them!)



-We served the masala with naan instead of rice. Rice would have been good, but we didn't have enough time to make it and the naan only took about five minutes.



The only drawback to the whole thing is that I think it cooked a bit too long. I cooked it on low for 8 hours, but then it was on keep warm for almost another five hours (Monday was a late night for both of us!). It didn't have a burned flavor, but you could tell it had been cooking quite a while. Nonetheless, it was amazing and I can't wait to make it again. You can do a lot of different things with it--use all chicken, make it all vegetarian, or combine the both in a different way.