Try it Tuesday...on Friday

I know you all have just been dying to see my 'Try it Tuesday' recipe :) This week's recipe comes from Recipezaar and is an Indian dish cooked in the crockpot. Two of my favorite things! We love Indian food, but I've always had a hard time finding good recipes, or at least recipes that taste like the food our Indian friends fix for us! This recipe had 115 reviews with an average of 4.5 out of 5 stars. I read through the reviews and then adapted it some based on the spices I had. Here's my version:

Crockpot Chicken Vindaloo

1 1/2 T vinegar
2 T Brown sugar
1 1/2 tsp minced garlic (3 cloves)
1 T whole mustard seed (I ground mine in our coffee grinder)
1 T curry
1 T cumin (yes a whole T)
1/2 tsp garam masala
1/2 tsp indian chili powder
1/4 tsp cayene pepper
1 T dried onion (or 1 onion chopped)
1/2 tsp salt
2 T olive oil
1 cup tomato sauce
1/2 cup water
1 (15oz) can chick peas drained/rinsed
3 boneless skinless chicken breasts thawed

Mix spices, tomato sauce, water, and olive oil together. Spray crockpot with non-stick cooking spray and cover bottom of crockpot with some of the sauce. Then place the chicken on top of the sauce. Add the chicken peas and the rest of the sauce. Cook on low for about 3.5 hours (in my crockpot, the original recipe suggested 5hrs).

Serve with rice and naan (as a side note I am thrilled that our Walmart sells Naan including one that is Garlic and Cilantro! What in the world...small town Western KY has Indian bread?! The world sure is changing :)) I have made Roti before, another Indian bread, but I have not been successful at making my own naan

My thoughts
This recipe, even with my changes, was pretty good. The original recipe didn't call for water I just added it because we like more sauce with our Indian food and the sauce seemed too thick. I think it was too much though. Next time I might just do 1/8-1/4 cup water. Maybe I would just double the sauce next time overall. The orginial recipe didn't call for garam masala. It called for cinnamon, cloves, ginger, cardamom, etc. I didn't have cardamom, so I thought I would try the garam masala instead. It also has cumin in it and with already 1 T of cumin in the recipe it might have been a little much, so next time I might decrease the cumin if I use garam masala. Most of the reviews suggested adding brown sugar, but I personally think 2 T might be too much. Vindaloos are a favorite of Spencer's because he loves spicy Indian food and Vindaloos are supposed to be spicy. In our opinion this recipe still needed more spice, of course :)