Another Favorite

For the past week and a half, all of our meals have been made in the crockpot.  I love casseroles just as much as the next person, but slow cooked meals require so much less prep and mess--and that's exactly what my meals require...no work!

I found this awesome website that has been a huge help--www.crockpot365.blogspot.com.  Some gal started it in 2009 as a New Year's resolution to use her crockpot every day for 1 year without ever reusing a recipe.  And she did it!

Personally, I love her website.  It seems that so many crockpot recipes I would find were basically some version of chicken and rice or things were heavy on cream-of-whatever soup...which is fine, but frankly, it gets old after a while.

I absolutely love Indian food and was over the moon to see that she successfully made a few different Indian dishes in the crockpot.  Some of the recipes are in this week's rotation but last week I tried the Tandoori Chicken and it was out of this world!  The blogger used a whole chicken but I've read other places not to slow cook a whole chicken--apparently the internal temperature doesn't reach the correct temperature quickly enough and it increases your risk for food poisoning.

With that said, I tried boneless-skinless chicken thighs knowing the dark meat would soak up all the flavors.  After 8 hours on low, it came out FANTASTIC!  I've tried other Indian dishes at home and they were terrible...but this was so good that I took the leftovers for lunch (well, pretty much just rice & the sauce since I still can't do much meat) on Friday and I've found myself thinking about it everyday.  No joke. Plus, Justin has a strong dislike for anything Indian but he loved it as well and thinks we should eat it at least once a week!  Overall, it's not as "Indian" as other dishes, especially curry dishes--so if you've never tried Indian, this might be a good dish to try.

So here's the recipe...like I said, I used thighs instead of a whole chicken and I skipped the food coloring.  We didn't have any on hand and I was not about ready to drop $4 on a new bottle of red dye.  Also, if you don't have some of the spices and you're not sure if you'll like them, check around to see if you can buy them out of a bulk bin.  I bought the cheapest cardamom that Dillon's had and just one bottle was $7...

Tandoori Chicken

3-4 lbs chicken (thawed or frozen, doesn't matter)

1 cup plain yogurt, divided (you could use sour cream, instead and that's what we used)

1 teaspoon ginger

1 teaspoon coriander

1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper (or more to taste)

1/4 teaspoon ground cloves

1/4 teaspoon black pepper

1 teaspoon salt

6 cardamom pods, or 1/4 teaspoon ground

1 tablespoon cumin

6 cloves garlic

5-6 drops red food coloring (optional)

1 lemon, juiced

In a small mixing bowl, combine 1/2 cup yogurt/sour cream with all dry spices, and the red food coloring. Place chicken into a 5-6 quart slow cooker and pour cream/mixture on top of meat.  Toss garlic cloves on top and squeeze on the lemon juice.

Cover and cook on low for 6-8 hours, or on high for 4.  Stir in the remaining 1/2 cup of yogurt/sour cream.  Serve over basmati rice...we also enjoyed ours with naan on the side!

It's really that easy--but you would never know by tasting it!