Josh and I love Indian food but we haven’t found a restaurant in St. Louis yet. There are no Indian restaurants in our part of town and we have not ventured out into surrounding areas yet. I have not cooked Indian food at home despite my love of cooking because most recipes are very involved and requires a bunch of unusual ingredients. In addition, no one seems to have found a way to get those rich Indian flavors with a shorter, more American cooking time. In the past when I wanted Indian food at home, I would just pick up some frozen food. I found a great company that make delicious food and was easy to get at the grocery store, Tandoor Chef. I love their Tandoor Chicken in Spinach! Anyway, Josh and I were looking for some different recipes to change up our weekly menu and I found a Rachel Ray recipe for Tandoori style chicken. We couldn’t afford all of the extra spices that we’d have to buy so we started looking for alternatives. While we were in the Asian food aisle we found a jar of Masala Curry and decided to try that instead.

On our way home from the grocery store we stopped in at our local ethnic food market to look at their spices and rice. We found out that they had tons of spice mixes for all kinds of dishes! We decided to start trying them out to see if we liked any of them and I thought that we should document this on the blog so we can keep track of which ones we like. I’ll start with the Tikka Masala Curry from Patak’s

This sauce was easy to use and the only missing ingredient was some chicken. I browned the chicken in a little olive oil.

I then added the sauce and brought it up to a boil. The sauce and chicken were left to simmer for about 15 minutes.

I served the sauce and chicken over rice. The basmati rice was cooked with about a tablespoon of cumin seeds for some additional flavor. We also had some Aloo Mater (potatoes with peas) for a side of veggies and a piece of naan. Both the potato dish and the naan were frozen and reheated in the microwave or oven, respectively.

I thought this was a very successful meal. The food was easy, fast and tasted pretty good. In addition, the sauce cost about as much as a jar of spaghetti sauce which made the meal very economical. I thought the sauce was a little sweeter and had a stronger tomato flavor than the chicken tikka masala I’m used to getting in a restaurant but I would consider purchasing this again. Josh thought the sauce was very close to restaurant quality and looks forward to eating it again. The sauce was advertised as medium spice and I agree. It was pleasantly spicy but not too much for the average American.

Disclaimer: This post is my opinion. I did not receive any compensation from this company to review this product.