I have so many recipes on my Pinterest board that I make regularly but with substitutions for ingredients I actually have in my cupboard, or else recipes that I double for bigger groups or huge recipes that I halve for a meal just the two of us. I love the ease of tracking my recipes on Pinterest, but a downside to just linking to the original is that I never write down my alterations. Some of my favorite recipes are like a middle school math problem as I work out how much of something to substitute and how much to double, etc. etc. If I had a paper copy, I could just scribble on the side.
So this is my first attempt at scribbling down the edits we've made to a recipe! Since we've been married, we've been in search of a good Chicken Tikka Masala recipe but everything we've tried so far hasn't quite tasted like it does in the restaurant. Then last week Trevor found this one from Feasting at Home. We had to substitute a crazy amount of ingredients, but it came out absolutely delicious! This time around we actually went out and purchased more of the real ingredients... I wish I'd written our simpler take (I'll try to record what substitutions I remember from that time too!) because a lot of the ingredients like coconut milk we don't typically have on hand. If you can get together all the ingredients from the real recipe, I'm sure it would be even better than this!!!
Chicken Tikka Masala
Ingredients:
- 2 lbs chicken breast or thighs, cut into 1-2 inch cubes, seasoned with salt and pepper
- 2 tablespoons olive oil
- 1 onion, diced
- 1 14.5 oz can diced tomatoes (the first time we substituted tomato paste)
- 1 tbsp powdered tomato (a rare food storage item! :)
- 4-6 garlic cloves, rough chopped)
- 1/4 tsp ground ginger
- 1 tsp coriander
- 1 tsp whole fennel seeds (optional--I leave it out because it tastes like black licorice)
- 2 tsp chili powder (a substitution for 2 tsps whole cumin seeds, 1 tsp paprika, 1 tsp cumin, 1/2 tsp turmeric, and .5-1 tsp. cayenne.... some day I hope to put in all the real spices!)
- 1/2 tsp crushed dry bay leaves
- 1 cup cauliflower
- a dab of horseradish sauce
- 1 tsp garam masala spice (we bought some, but apparently you can google recipes to make your own)
- .5 tsp kosher salt
- 2 tsps sugar
- 1 14 oz can of coconut milk (the first time we made a substitute that involved cream cheese and milk mixed together)
Steps:
- Set the instant pot to saute. Add in the olive oil, onion, garlic, and ginger, and saute for 2-3 minutes until it smells good.
- Add in the coriander (if whole? Ours is and I don't know if that's normal) and cook for 1 minute.
- Add tomatoes, chicken, cauliflower, and the rest of the spices, and then finally the coconut milk. Mix it all together.
- Set the instant pot to pressure cook on high for 7 minutes for chicken breasts and 9 for chicken thighs (we often cook with frozen chicken and add a minute or two of cook time to compensate for this).
- Depressurize manually.
- Let sit for a little bit until the sauce thickens to your liking. If needed set the instant pot to saute to reduce further. Or if you reduce too much, add more coconut milk or yogurt to fix that.
This is a new favorite that I think we'll make a lot of!
