Skinny chicken tikka masala
A chicken tikka masala so delicious that you wouldn’t even know it’s healthy!
10 mins
35 mins
249 kcals
serves 4
SKINNY CHICKEN TIKKA MASALA
Chicken tikka masala is one of my all time favourite meals- I know it’s not a proper curry, but there’s a reason that it’s become one of Britain’s best loved dishes! One of my healthy eating aims has been to find a way to make a really tasty chicken tikka masala that is also completely guilt-free. I’ve done this version in the slow-cooker before which I was really pleased with, but I think this one’s my best yet!
It was suggested to me a while ago on my Facebook page that I try using coconut yoghurt instead of coconut milk to keep this low fat, and I was more pleased than I would have expected with the results! I used a low-fat one rather than fat free as I wanted to have some creaminess (the specific one I used was the Tesco low-fat one which if you are following Slimming World is 9 syns for a large 450g tub).
I also did something that I have wanted to try for ages, and I barbecued the chicken before adding it to the sauce! I know this sounds a bit of a hassle, but actually I recently bought this mini retro barbecue from Waitrose (it was half price for £20) which is so lovely to use, and I really enjoyed doing it! (It was Saturday night dinner so I didn’t mind faffing around a bit!). Equally, if you are having a bbq anyway, you could always plan to just get the chicken cooked so it’s ready to add to the sauce whenever you need it. You would just need to make sure that if you aren’t cooking it immediately in the sauce from the barbecue that you cook it all the way through on the bbq (no pink in the middle), then you can just keep it in the fridge until you are ready to use it.
This does involve pre-marinading the chicken, but I promise you it’s worth it!
I’m sure this would still be lovely with just grilled chicken (I cook on an old Aga that doesn’t work properly so unfortunately I don’t have that option!), but I do think that the barbecue flavour really made this extra delicious!
Skinny chicken tikka masala
Ingredients
- For the marinade:
- 4 chicken breasts
- 1 thumb ginger peeled and finely chopped
- 3 cloves garlic peeled and finely chopped
- Juice of 1 lemon
- 1 tsp garam masala
- 1 tsp salt
- 1 tsp cinnamon
- 4 tbsp coconut yoghurt
- For the tikka masala sauce:
- 1 tsp butter
- 1 clove garlic finely chopped
- 1 green chilli finely chopped
- 2 tsp ground cumin
- 2 tsp paprika
- 2 tsp ground coriander
- 1/2 tsp cayenne pepper
- 1/2 tsp cinnamon
- 250 g passata
- The rest of the tub of coconut yoghurt
- Coriander to garnish
- Please note: you will also need 4 bbq skewers to cook the chicken
Instructions
- First of all, you need to marinade the chicken for at least 20 minutes, but ideally either overnight or for a few hours.
- Chop the chicken into chunks, add in the marinade ingredients (ginger, garlic, lemon juice, garam masala, salt, cinnamon, coconut yoghurt), cover with cling-film and pop in the fridge to marinade.
- As explained above, I cooked the chicken on the barbecue (long enough to blacken the outside, but not worrying about cooking all the way through as I was going to add it straight into the sauce to cook through). Just grill the chicken if you can't barbecue it.
- To get the sauce ready, melt the teaspoon of butter in a deep frying pan, then add the garlic and chilli and cook gently for a couple of minutes.
- Stir through the cumin, paprika, coriander, cayenne pepper and cinnamon and then add in the passata.
- Add in about 250 ml water and bring to a gentle simmer
- Add in your barbequed (or grilled) chicken, stir to coat, pop a lid on and simmer gently for about 20 minutes to give the chicken a chance to cook through. If the sauce dried out too much add a little extra water.
- In a small saucepan, gently warm through the coconut yoghurt (if it’s warm it won’t curdle when you add it to the sauce). Once warm, add into the sauce and stir through. If the sauce is still watery then turn up the heat and bubble away excess moisture so that you have a nice thick sauce. Season with salt.
- Serve sprinkled with fresh chopped coriander.
Hi! It says for the sauce to use the rest of the tub of the greek yogurt. but how big of a tub of yogurt are we talking about? How creamy is this recipe?
How many calories is this?
This is amazing! Especially barbecuing the chicken first…