Chicken Tikka Masala

Chicken tikka masala has been one of my favorite dishes at Indian restaurants ever since I was introduced to it at Taste of India in Pittsburgh, and I've been looking for a good recipe for it for a long time. We finally found a good one in a recent Cook's Illustrated.

• 2 pounds Chicken Tikka, prepared with or after the sauce
• 3 tbsp vegetable oil
• 1 onion
• 2 garlic cloves
• 2 tsp grated ginger
• 1 serrano chile
• 1 tbsp tomato paste
• 1 tbsp garam masala
• 28 oz crushed tomatoes
• 2 tsp sugar
• ½ tsp salt
• 2/3 cup heavy cream
• ¼ cup chopped cilantro leaves

(For the chicken tikka, see the linked post.)

Chop the onion finely. Mince or press the garlic and chop the serrano.

Heat the vegetable oil over medium heat until shimmering. Fry the onions until light brown, about eight minutes.

Add the garlic, ginger, serrano, tomato paste, and garam masala, stir, and fry until fragrant, two or three minutes.

Add the tomatoes, sugar, and salt.

Bring to a boil, cover, and reduce heat to medium-low. Simmer for fifteen minutes.

Add the cream and stir.

Once the sauce is hot, cut the chicken tikka into bite-sized pieces and stir it into the sauce.

Serve with chopped cilantro.

(If your chicken tikka masala doesn't seem to have as much chicken as ours, that's not a problem; we used 50% more chicken than recommended, because we had extra.)

Ideally, the chicken tikka should finish right as the sauce finishes. I've found that the best way to do this is to plan dinner as follows:

1. Gather all the ingredients. This is always my first step for any recipe, since I much prefer to discover that I forgot to buy something at this point, instead of once I have things cooking.
2. Trim and sprinkle the chicken breasts, and stick them in the fridge.
3. Chop everything but the cilantro for the sauce, grating the extra ginger needed for the chicken tikka and chopping some extra garlic on the way. This should take less than thirty minutes. Don't forget to set up the oven in here.
4. Get the oil heated about four minutes before the chicken is done resting, and start frying the onions. Start the rice while the oil is heating; it'll finish early, but that shouldn't be a problem.
5. While the onions fry, deal with dipping the chicken and getting it in the oven.

From here, everything should just work out.