While not all of Trader Joe’s Indian-inspired dishes are great, they do have some Indian products in their frozen food lineup that have blown us away. So we were pretty excited to try out the Trader Joe’s Chicken Tikka Masala. According to the Trader Joe’s website, this dish has been in their lineup since 2009, and supposedly it’s a favorite among Trader Joe’s staffers. So it’s about time we finally tried this out for ourselves.
One of the complaints we had about the Butter Chicken with Basmati Rice was that it had an extremely long cook time. That meal spent nine minutes in our microwave. Thankfully, the Chicken Tikka Masala won’t need to cook for that long. Stick it in the microwave for three minutes, stir the sauce a bit, then pop it back in for 60 to 90 additional seconds. Easy peasy!
This comes out smelling like a dream!
In the tray, you’ll notice that the chicken section is separated from the rice portion by a divider. The rice tends to jump into the sauce, and the sauce tends to jump into the rice, so you won’t have a perfect separation, but that doesn’t matter much because this meal is at its best when everything is mixed together.
The chicken here is halfway decent. It doesn’t have that melt-in-your-mouth quality that you’ll get with the fish portion of the Trader Joe’s Korma Fish Curry. In fact, we think our comment about the chicken in the Butter Chicken with Basmati Rice is applicable here as well. We said the chicken was a bit dry, but it doesn’t matter because it’s drenched in sauce — and that’s true here as well.
This creamy curry sauce is fantastic. It has loads of flavor and just a bit of kick to make it stand out. This is not the same sauce that’s used in the Korma Fish Curry, and we think that sauce is superior to this one, without question. However, the sauce here is no slouch, and it’s definitely our favorite part of the meal.
The basmati rice is nothing special, but it’s a classic side for a meal like this, and it tastes pretty good when it’s mixed into the curry sauce and chicken. Unfortunately, there’s just not enough sauce to go around, so by the end of the meal you’ll have some sauceless rice to deal with.
One box of this stuff has about 360 calories (130 from fat), which isn’t really all that bad. While this isn’t incredibly diet-friendly, it’s also not going to destroy a diet for those of you counting calories. The sodium level seems alright as well, at 580 mg.
Trader Joe’s Chicken Tikka Masala is a tasty treat that we think you’ll enjoy. It’s not quite as good as the Korma Fish Curry, of course, but we didn’t expect it to be. Very few frozen Indian dishes can match the perfection of that one.
To learn more about the nutrition content, cooking instructions, or ingredients in this Trader Joe’s tikka masala, check out our package scan below.
