Chicken Tikka Masala And The New Rice Cooker Miracle

My new rice cooker arrived today in the mail.  So, of course, I've already cooked rice in it for tonight's dinner.

Is it possible to fall in love with an appliance?  Can you know after only one meal?

Is there truly such a thing as love at first bite?

Because I am in heaven.

We ended up buying a Sanyo rice cooker (the ECJ-HC100S): a fuzzy logic one that has a porridge setting, a brown rice setting, a fabu timer and is a 10-cup size.  It also comes with a steamer insert for veggies to steam along with the rice (nifty, eh?), a tofu-making insert (which won't get a lot of use here, I expect), and a special bowl for slow-cooking in case I need to use it that way, too.

I figured the bigger size would be better when we had company or folks over for dinner. 

So what did I make today for dinner, you ask?
Chicken and Chickpea Tikka Masala in the crock pot.  Boy was it good, and so easy you will not believe.

I usually make it from scratch, using a recipe that is a sort of combination of this one from What's Cooking (which I found via Recovering Noah -- thanks mucho!) and this from Morgan's Menu.  But I lost the recipe as I'd written it out the last time I made it and I didn't feel like doing a "taste as I go along" cooking spree this afternoon to get it back to where I like it.

Sooooooo...I cheated and used a jar of sauce.

This one was from Kitchens of India brand, I found it at our local Kroger.  I liked it a LOT better than the Patak's brand, which tastes weirdly lemony and not at all like any tikka masala I've ever eaten anywhere else.  The Kitchens of India one was yummy and spicy, but not painfully so, and had a lovely undercurrent of cilantro.  I added the sauce along with a finely diced onion and a pound of raw skinless, boneless chicken thighs that I cut into bite-sized pieces to the crockpot and let it simmer on LOW for a couple of hours.

After that, I added in about 1/4 cup of chopped, fresh cilantro and let it simmer on warm until dinnertime (for about 2 1/2 hours).  My crockpot tends to cook hot, and the chicken was done early and I didn't want it or the sauce to overcook.  Doing it this way let the chicken simmer to being completely done without getting that icky, stringy overcooked stage.   I also added in a can of chickpeas at the point when I added the cilantro because I'm trying to make sure we eat more healthy fiber.

I sprinkled fresh cilantro on top of the servings after I scooped them out, too.

It was perfect.  So yummy we both had seconds.  (The Peanut had some pizza, told me the food looked and smelled nasty and wouldn't even try a bite.  So much for luring her into eating ethnic more often.  SIGH  But momma can dream, can't she?)

In the rice cooker, I cooked some brown basmati rice which I rinsed, then popped in the rice cooker pot along with the right amount of water, and then I set the timer for dinner time.  The cooker turned itself on and cooked the rice to perfection, and kept it warm and steamy and ready for eating.

Have I mentioned that I am in love with this thing already?

No boiling the pot over on the stupid electric stove.  Not one underdone, crunchy grain.  And we have leftover rice for tomorrow's curry leftovers, too. 

The fact that I can rinse the rice cooker out now, and get some steel cut oats ready to go for in the morning?  Enormous bonus.  I think I'll add some diced apple, cinnamon and maybe a few chopped dates and see how it tastes.

Jeebus, I can already tell I'll be experimenting with this thing for weeks.  Boo yah!  Prepare for the Many Adventures in Rice Cookery, coming soon to a blog near you...

(Fun photo via Peter Gasston.)