Description (Some HTML is OK)
A slow cooked chicken curry in a tasty tomato sauce. Slow cooker food is brilliant, one set of prep then pop it all in and go (back) to work... so easy.
Ingredients
Makes 6 servings
- 500g free range diced chicken (or slightly more if you want to use leg pieces with bones)
- 1 medium white onion
- 2 thumb sized pieces of ginger
- 3 largish cloves of garlic
- Sizeable bunch of coriander
- 3-4 small green chillis
- 1.5 teaspoons coriander seeds
- 1.5 teaspoons cumin seeds
- 1 teaspoon tumeric
- 4 tins tomatoes (or you can peel and chop fresh tomatoes, but frankly who's got the time?)
- A few splashes of groundnut oil
- 1-2 limes (depending on taste)
Preparation
Basic prep
Finely chop the onion
Peel and finely chop the garlic and ginger
Deseed the chilli (if you like, you can reserve the seeds and add them if you want to make the dish hotter)
Dry roast the spices in a hot pan until one or two start to jump, then grind them thoroughly
Add some oil to the spices and mix to make a thick paste
Pour three of the tins of tomato into a bowl and blitz them with a food processor
Very roughly chop the remaining tin of tomato
The cooking
Pour the tomatoes into the slow cooker and set it to low
Fry the onion over a medium heat in a splash or two of ground nut oil until the onion is golden
Add the garlic, ginger and chilli and stir into the onion for about a minute
Add the chicken and give it a very quick stir
Add the spice paste and stir everything thoroughly to get the chicken coated and the meat slightly browned (should take a couple of minutes)
Add the chicken to the tomatoes in the slow cooker and pop the lid on
Cook for 8 hours
Leave overnight to gather flavour (optional)
Before serving, and after reheating (if you managed to not eat it immediately)
Add lime juice to taste (I used the juice of 1 lime)
Add one handful of chopped coriander, and another to taste
Serve with rice (I like Nigel Slater's Fragrant Rice from his Appetite book), a bowl of yoghurt and a bowl of chopped coriander for people to help themselves
Comments
After a couple of cookings, I think it's better with bones (the wife disagrees, so we go half and half). You may prefer to remove the skin from any leg/thigh pieces.
Something not quite right with this recipe - 4 tins of tomatoes creates far too much liquid for a slow cooker recipe. Also it didn't smell very nice while cooking, I could only smell hot tomatoes and no spicy smell whatsoever. The excessive amount of liquid resulted in the chicken cooking far too quickly even on a low setting, as can be expected in a slow cooker recipe. I had to rescue it by spooning out much of the liquid and adding half a can of coconut milk and some curry powder, after which it became something like a chicken tikka masala and was lovely.
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