Fearless Chicken Tikka Masala
If you can stir and open cans, you can make this. Be fearless.
P.S. If you’ve made The Chickpea Bowl, you’ve pretty much already made Fearless CTM.
The Basic Idea
Saute aromatics (fresh ginger, garlic, jalapeno) in some fat.
Stir in a bunch of Indian spices and a little tomato paste to make your flavor bomb.
Stir in diced chicken thighs.
Dump in canned tomatoes and coconut milk.
Simmer for maybe twenty minutes.
Serve over rice, and top with cilantro (assuming you don’t have that medical condition where you hate cilantro).
The Non-Mathematical Recipe
Recipe Principles
If you can stir, you can make this.
Chicken thighs are forgiving and are virtually impossible to overcook.
You don’t have to measure because all of these ingredients go together in any ratio.
If you make it all in one fell swoop, count on being in the kitchen for 40 minutes. Luckily, many steps are easily done ahead of time. Those will be listed below in Cheats and Preferences.
How Much It Makes
This batch is about eight adult servings.
My two boys eat adult portions of this, and my daughter barely eats anything. With eight servings in our hungry family of five, we usually do one hearty dinner and two leftover lunches the next day. The batch is rarely enough to double and freeze. I could add another piece or two of chicken and another can or two of ingredients, but the chicken especially is harder to scale by one or two pieces since chicken is rarely sold that way.
Ingredients You’ll Need
3 TBSP. OF FAT // Butter, coconut oil, olive oil, canola, ghee… literally anything works in any combo, but my personal favorite is butter and olive oil together.)
1/3 C. AROMATICS // I like equal parts garlic and ginger, along with half a finely minced jalapeno.
1/4 C. INDIAN SPICES // I’ll talk more about this further down, but a good start is 1 tbsp. cumin, 1 tbsp. ground coriander, and 2 tbsp. store-bought garam masala. 4 tablespoons = 1/4 cup.
2-4 TBSP. TOMATO PASTE
6-8 BONELESS SKINLESS CHICKEN THIGHS // Diced into bite-sized chunks.
FOUR 15-OZ CANS OF TOMATOES // I usually do one can diced and three cans of crushed or non-seasoned sauce. If you like your Fearless CTM more chunky, use all diced or even skip out on one can to have a higher chicken-to-sauce ratio.
A GENEROUS GLUG OR DOLLOP OF SOMETHING CREAMY // Coconut cream, coconut milk, heavy cream… anything fatty and creamy is perfect. I usually scrape the cream off the top of a can of coconut milk and discard the remaining coconut water. Adding the water thins the CTM too much.
RICE // My husband is Japanese, so we’re rice snobs. We have a Japanese rice cooker (seriously, no English buttons) and use Kokoho Rose premium rice.
CILANTRO // The perfect topping.
How to Actually Cook Fearless CTM
Remember, if you can stir, you can make this.
Gather your ingredients first, including chopping garlic, dicing chicken, and opening cans. Have everything ready next to your stove because this puppy moves quickly.
Grab something to cook this in. Here’s the order from best to worst: a shallow Dutch oven or braiser, a regular Dutch oven, a deep skillet way bigger than your face, a regular soup pot. I’ll explain why in Cheats and Preferences.
Put the pot on the stove over medium-high heat, and add the fat. Let it melt and start to bubble the tiniest bit.
Add the aromatics and stir. Stir for no more than ten Mississippi’s before moving on. Tiny garlic burns big.
Dump in the spices and stir for another 5-10 seconds. If for some reason, your pan is too dry, add more oil. The spices need to almost fry. It’s a delight. Also don’t stop stirring.
Stir in the tomato paste for another few seconds. At this point, you’ve been stirring for less than a minute, and you won’t believe the magical smells coming from so little effort. Don’t be alarmed that this looks like a paste; it’s supposed to - a flavor bomb paste.
Add the diced chicken (that you already generously seasoned with salt), and stir it into the flavor bomb. The chicken will get coated and pick up a little extra flavor from direct contact with the pan. In this case, keep stirring the chicken until fully coated. We leave chicken alone when we’re sautéing it, but this situation is different. Stir so the flavor bomb doesn’t burn.
Dump in the canned tomatoes and stir well so that the flavor bomb becomes friends with the entire dish. Add several healthy pinches of salt, the “something creamy,” and let it simmer for twenty minutes, stirring once or twice throughout. If it’s bubbling aggressively enough to pop on your stove, turn the heat down. You need to still see bubbles but not crazy ones. Feel free to put a lid over half the pot, especially if you’re using a Dutch oven. A gentle simmer will keep your chicken from getting tough, too.
Taste it. If it doesn’t sing and make you want to pay me money, it needs more salt. You should want to pay me money.
Serve over rice, and top with cilantro.
Cheats and Preferences
Things You Can Do Ahead
GARLIC-GINGER-JALAPENO PASTE
Use Trader Joe’s frozen ginger and garlic cubes. In the freezer section close to the vegetables are these tiny red boxes of little minced ginger and garlic squares, and they are MAGICAL. No knife needed. For this recipe, you want a solid half a pack each of garlic and ginger, maybe 12-15 cubes total.
If you’re very against chopping a jalapeno, use cayenne pepper.
Make a paste in the food processor. I love Aarti’s ginger garlic paste. I make it once a month or so and just keep it in a jar in the fridge for FCTM, stir-fry, The Chickpea Bowl, etc.. It’s basically equal parts garlic and ginger whirred together with some canola or vegetable oil to make a paste. If I’m making a batch that will only be used for FCTM, I add the jalapeno to the food processor, too.
Buy a bag of peeled garlic instead of peeling your own. It’s a lot of garlic, and peeling it is the biggest time suck.
MIX THE SPICES
You want a small bowl of spices (1/4 cup or so), and whatever combo you want will work. Use the bowl as your measurement, not fourteen measuring spoons.
In terms of flavor, here are the spices to use in the order of most important to least important:
Cumin, coriander, cardamom, paprika, cinnamon, turmeric, clove. For example, 1 tbsp. each of cumin and coriander, maybe 2 tsp. each of cardamom and paprika, 1/4-1/2 tsp of the rest.
Or use all store-bought garam masala along with some extra cumin and maybe some paprika. I tend to not use all store-bought mixes because I like the flavor to be heavier on cumin and coriander, but I have it for when I’m in a pinch.
Exact measurements are exhausting and don’t make enough of a difference to matter. Just go through the list of spices and add the most of the first ones and the least of the last ones. It’s all very scientific.
OPEN CANS
Don’t knock this. If you’re basically dumping and stirring, having cans open up to a couple of hours beforehand will not hurt anything and will make the process quick.
DICE AND SEASON THE CHICKEN
This can be done up to two days before. The salt will only make the chicken juicier. I also recommend dicing chicken when it’s halfway frozen. The chicken doesn’t slip, and the process is incredibly fast. No exact sizes required.
MAKE-AHEAD INSTRUCTIONS
Make the entire dish, cool, and freeze. It heats up great in a pot once it’s mostly thawed.
Make the entire dish and refrigerate. It will hold for a couple of days for sure. Even keep it in the pot you cooked it in for easy reheating. This is a good option if you have time to cook dinner in the morning but not at actual dinner time.
Make the sauce portion minus the chicken. Follow the instructions completely except don’t add the chicken to the flavor bomb. Just add the tomatoes and cream and simmer. Store the simmered, seasoned sauce in the fridge, and when it’s time to cook and serve FCTM, bring the sauce to a simmer, add the uncooked chicken, and simmer until the chicken is cooked, about ten minutes probably.
A Cooking Vessel Discussion
The best type of heat for FCTM is hot and even. The sauce and chicken are also better served simmering with a wide opening (more surface area to thicken) versus a smaller opening (like a soup or saucepot). You’ll end up with FCTM at the end no matter the vessel, but different tools work better for different methods.
A shallow braiser is the top choice because cast iron is heavy and consistently hot, the opening is wide for ideal thickening, and the enameled coating can handle the flavor bomb without burning.
A regular Dutch oven works just as well except for the smaller difference of not being shallow. The higher sides lower the thickening power of the simmer but not by enough to make you buy a special braiser for this dish.
A big skillet will offer mostly the same experience as a braiser, but most skillets won’t hold the entire recipe without making you think a stir will overflow the pan. Just use common sense with how much you’re adding. Don’t be like Michael Scott and drive into a lake just because I told you to use four cans. If your pan holds three, please use three.
A sauce or soup pot is serviceable but will not give you the even heat and depth of flavor you get from the cast iron. You’ll also not get the same thickening power because the sides are so high. Still, please do not buy a pan especially for this. Use what you have. It’s all fine.
Story and Summary
If you can stir, you can make this.
If you prep your stuff ahead of time, this comes together in twenty minutes.
You do not have to be afraid of different cuisines. Things are easy in other countries, too.
You do not have to be afraid of not measuring. The ingredients are friends in all the ratios.
If you happen to watch my Meal Plan Mondays on Instagram every week, you know that we make this dish quite often. Twice a month is a likely guess. Four of us love it, one of us tolerates it, and I can make it with my eyes closed at this point.
Red sauce with chicken over rice doesn’t have to be scary to your picky kids. Indian spices don’t have to be scary to your meat-and-potatoes partner. You will come up with a million reasons to not make this, and while some might be valid, you’ll never know until you try. Plus this puppy is cheap, so if you’re worried about breaking the bank, you won’t.
Try it. Be fearless. I think you’ll find this recipe to be a family favorite for you, too.
