Feeding Friendship: Greek Yogurt

Our ingredient for this challenge, as chosen by Veronica, is Greek Yogurt. I was intrigued by this choice, since I knew there would be a lot of options for what type of meal I could make, and yogurt is very good for you, but I don't eat enough because I don't like it straight up. I found lots of great ways that you can substitute Greek yogurt for sour cream in a lot of recipes, but I didn't end up doing that. I also decided that I'd made enough dessert in December for a while and that I wanted to make something savory.

I've been fairly active on Pinterest lately, and I've been using it as both a source of recipes and a good place to save recipes I find on the far corners of the Internet. (for those of you who aren't familiar, Pinterest is a place to "pin" pictures and links on a series of virtual bulletin boards and then share them in a social networking kind of way. You can follow my pins if you care- I'm sarahmk16). Some random person had pinned a slow cooker Chicken Tikka Masala recipe from a blog called Smells Like Home. This is my favorite Indian dish, and I knew that if I made it that I could control the level of spiciness. Plus, I got to use my crock pot, which is one of my favorite ways to cook since it produces such tender meat and magically has dinner ready when you want it.

Here is the link to the original recipe she posted. It made me feel good that this cook and blogger is not someone who fixes Indian food a lot, so I thought that lowered my chances of messing it up. I followed her process exactly, but made a few key substitutions. First, I halved the recipe, as she said she did. I also used 3 large chicken breasts cut into roughly 1-inch chunks because I don't cook much with chicken thighs and had a lot of chicken breasts in the freezer. I also substituted some leftover diced green chilis from a can instead of using a jalapeno, since it scared me. Here are the ingredients for the dish as I made it:

For the chicken:

• 3 large boneless, skinless chicken breasts
• 1/2 tbsp ground coriander
• 1/2 tbsp ground cumin
• 1/2 tsp kosher salt
• 7 0z 2% Greek Yogurt
• 1 Tbsp diced green chilis (or use 1 whole jalapeno, piereced several times with a knife)

For the Sauce:

• 2 Tbsp butter
• 1/2 large onion, diced
• 3 cloves equivalent of minced garlic
• 1/2 tbsp of kosher salt
• 1 1/2 tbsp garam masala spice
• 1 piece of fresh ginger about 1/5 inches long, grated (freeze first to make grating easier) 
• 2 cups crushed tomatoes (I used fire roasted Muir Glen brand) 
• 1/2 tbsp sugar
• 1 1/2 tbsp heavy cream 

To Serve:

• 2+ cups cooked rice
• cilantro garnish (if you want) 

I started out by chopping up the chicken breasts into bite-sized chunks. I dumped these into the crock pot bowl, sprinkled in the coriander, cumin, and salt, and gave it a good stir to try to coat all the pieces with spices.

Next, I added the yogurt and combined it with the chicken evenly.

Once I stirred in the yogurt, I put the peppers on top. 

Then I got all my elements for the sauce ready to go- diced the onion, minced the ginger, and got out the garlic, butter and spices. You may want to open your tomato can ahead too, just to save time. Then I melted the butter in the pan and then sautéed the onion, garlic and salt on medium high until it started to brown. I turned the heat down a touch because it seemed like the butter was cooking pretty hard.  

After the onion looked slightly browned, I stirred in the garam masala. I thought my go-to spice store would have it, but their website doesn't list it, so I just got some at the grocery store.  

That put some scent in the house, let me tell you! A minute later, I added the crushed tomato and sugar. Stir it all up, making sure to scrape any caramelized action off of the bottom of the pan. Mine looked like this: 

...and smelled amazing. Now, into the crock pot! Resist the urge to stir, readers! You don't need to mix the yogurt chicken and the tomato sauce at this point. 

The recipe called for 5 hours on low. I started a little late in the day, so I cheated with an hour and a half on high and then 2 hours on low. Let me say that this is not a meal you're going to cook on the sly or not notice. It announces: Indian food! all day long, so it makes it hard to wait until it's done. Your neighbors may smell it too ;) During the last hour, or last 15 minutes (depending upon whether you have minute rice or not), make rice to go along with the chicken. I made 4 "servings" of rice, since you can always repurpose it later if you have too much. I had brown minute rice, but you could use just about any long-grain variety. Once your chicken and sauce has been in long enough, or you can't wait anymore, give it all a good stir to combine the chicken and tomato elements. Then the recipe said to add in the heavy cream, stir again, and cook for another 10 minutes. Honestly, I completely forgot about this part with no ill effect, in my opinion. It does account for why her sauce looks a little more orange and mine a little more red though. Here's how it turned out: 

It was delicious! It had a ton of flavor without being too terribly spicy. As a person who is a little timid about cooking Indian dishes, I was really pleased at how it came out. You should try it!