Recipe: Chicken Tikka Masala - Lightened Up

Some of you may have noticed that Kate and I regularly cook and review a lot of Mexican, Italian and American cuisine. For some reason, Indian food has not made it in the regular rotation yet. It's not a "go-to" option for me when I'm deciding where to go out to eat or what to cook. On the rare occasion that I do get Indian food, I always order the chicken tikka masala and I loooove it. I'm not sure why I don't get it more often!

While perusing on Pinterest recently, I found a recipe for a lightened up version of chicken tikka masala from the blog Skinnytaste and decided to give it a try. As I mentioned, I don't have a lot of experience cooking Indian food, so I wasn't sure what to expect. I was very pleasantly surprised! It was fantastic and was really low fat. I will definitely be making this again!

Ingredients:
2 tsp canola oil
1 small onion, minced (I did not use this)
1 tbsp fresh ginger, grated
3 cloves garlic, crushed
1 1/2 cups crushed tomatoes
4 oz. fat free plain Greek yogurt
1/2 cup 1% milk
1 tbsp cumin
1 tbsp garam masala
1 tsp turmeric (optional - I skipped this)
1/2 tbsp chili powder
Salt
2 boneless skinless chicken breasts, cubed
4 tbsp fresh cilantro, chopped (more or less to taste)

Start out by heating the oil in a large skillet. If you like onions (gross! jk), add those and cook until about golden. Next add the ginger and stir together with the onions for a couple minutes. Add the garlic and let that cook for another minute. Add the cumin, garam masala (which I couldn't find at my Kroger's - had to go to Fresh Market), turmeric, chili powder and salt. This will cook for about 2 minutes. Next stir in the tomatoes, yogurt and milk and let it simmer on low for about 10 minutes. The sauce will have thickened at this point. Add the chicken and let it simmer for 10 - 15 minutes or until the chicken is cooked through. Now it's ready to serve! I served it on top of brown rice and put quite a bit of the fresh cilantro on top. I absolutely love cilantro, so you may not want that much if you're not a big fan. Feel free to add veggies to it as well! You could even make it a vegetarian dish with all veggies.

Enjoy!!

~Kris