Meal Prep: Chicken Tikka Masala

Last week was Japanese curry, this week: Indian curry! Chicken tikka masala, that is. I’m a fan of The Kitchn’s slow cooker version of this recipe – it’s essentially a ‘dump’ recipe where you just dump a bunch of ingredients into the slow cooker, turn it on and 4-8 hours later… voila! I tend to be a tweaker but this one I tweak very, very little…

Here I am prepping everything in the morning. I had the other half of that family pack of boneless/skinless chicken thighs that I used for the Japanese curry (I froze it in a big Ziploc bag – labeled for my convenience – and thawed it in the fridge overnight). I also realized that I’d used the last of my tomato paste the prior week, so I didn’t add that until much later in the cooking process. No biggie – the flavor didn’t change and I’m under the impression that it’s mostly a thickening agent anyway. (Also — there’s only one can of tomatoes in the pic, but I pulled out another one because these cans are only 14 oz and the recipe calls for 28.)

Half mixed in, half not. You can see that my slow cooker isn’t even 1/2 way full. The slow cooker liners really help with clean-up, add no funky weird plastic taste, and actually prevent burning/sticking in the corners/edges; you know how sometimes your edges get super hot and stuff sticks or burns or dries out over there? These kind of keep that from happening as a nice little coincidence.

{Note: a few people have asked me about the slow cooker liners. I use Reynolds slow cooker liners – affiliate link – though a few other brands make them as well. You should be able to find them at Target/Walmart or similar stores, and probably at your local supermarket as well, if it’s got a section that sells tin foil pans, aluminum foil, etc. We first saw them roughly 7 years ago here and now I’m a devoted fan.}

Here it is all mixed together. Smells great already! Then it goes bye-bye for 8 hours on low, or 4 hours on high. The first 2x I used high and it was fine, this time I used low and I think it was still fine – no major difference, at least none that Hubba Hubby told me about…

And here it is after I’ve stirred in 3/4 cup of heavy cream and let it cook for roughly 30 minutes with the lid off, to help it thicken up.

For a side dish this week — miso mushrooms! Funny how in the pic, the electric stovetop looks purple but it’s red in real life. This is a super simple side dish that I love and Hubba Hubby enjoys — he’s not a mushroom fan but said “you make the mushrooms taste like not-mushrooms” – while I disagree and think this just makes them very meaty-savory, if it makes him happy then hey, go for it.

I browned butter in the bottom of a large skillet, added a large container of sliced mushrooms and let them cook for a bit, tossing so every bit could touch the butter (half a stick, I think… oh boy). After a while, the mushrooms softened and shrank a little, and I added just a small spoonful of white/shiro miso…

stirring it all around until it melted into the liquid coming out of the mushrooms, and coating each one with its delicious savory flavor. Turn off the flames and enjoy that meaty mushroom taste!

As for packing… oh boy. I love these Rubbermaid “divided rectangles” (around $3 for a pack of 3, at our local supermarket – Amazon has them for roughly double the price!) but the compartments aren’t completely separate, which means when Hubba Hubby tosses them into his gym bag… well, sometimes sauce will travel from one side to the other. Especially when there’s no rice or carby/starchy side dish soaking it up (more on that in a minute)…

Here’s where I had to get creative. Hubba Hubby has some macros/dietary goals that I don’t always quite understand or have trouble really embracing – one of them being a lower carb lifestyle than I enjoy. Chicken tikka masala is meant to be served over basmati rice — but I’ve been known to use brown rice for some extra fiber/protein/”full-feeling” and once you put enough sauce on it, it’s fine anyway. But I respect his lifestyle choices and I try to work around them best I can – it’s a nice challenge – so for this one, I went to the store to pick up cauliflower rice only to find they were all out! Giving him a container of just chicken tikka masala (basically chicken and sauce) with a side of miso mushrooms seemed like way too little food, so I compromised and cut up tortillas (our naan did not make it, unfortunately, and I didn’t realize until too late so I tossed the package — thankfully, we always have flour tortillas on hand for #TacoTuesday) – 1 per lunch box – and wrapped them in a sandwich bag on the side. I put the miso mushrooms close to that side to hopefully stem some of the sauce from jumping to the other side, and then filled the rest with chicken tikka masala.

I had a secret agenda for the wrapped tortillas too — to force Hubba Hubby to microwave the tortilla separately from the lunch. Hahaha! I outfoxed him since he will occasionally just microwave all of it together, to my chagrin, as I think it detracts from the quality of the final product. He said some of the sauce did jump to the other side, the tortillas stayed dry but the baggie got wet and was gross. Oh well. Overall, he said this week was a raging success — the mushrooms were great, he didn’t notice there was no rice or cauliflower rice, he didn’t feel like he was eating a ton of vegetables (probably because mushrooms barely count as vegetables!), and he enjoyed using the tortilla to make ‘mini tacos’ of the chicken tikka masala.