Dinner - Garam Masala Chicken with Basmati Rice Pilaf

I have been really slacking on my updates lately!! We had this for dinner a couple nights ago, and it was a delicious and really simple meal!

We picked up a couple of these Kitchens of India instant rice side-dishes on a recent visit to Woodman's grocery store. At 99 cents, we couldn't pass them up!! We decided to pair the rice with a simple chicken breast coated in White Jasmine's garam masala spice blend.

Let's start with the Kitchens of India review. The "rice delicacy" we chose was Basmati Rice Pilaf with Vegetables & Nuts, Kashmiri Vegetable Biryani variety. The ease of preparing this side dish was incredible! The rice came in a pouch, so it was heat and eat style. It kinda weirded me out, since you just popped the pouch in a pot of boiling water, and in 5 minutes, you had a hot side dish! Strange, but not too bad.

The flavor of the rice was not quite my favorite. Matt enjoyed it, but I think the flavor was too much for me. It was heavy on clove, quite smokey, and overall I was surprised that the rice was pretty spicy-hot as well. I am not sure I would buy this flavor again, as it just wasn't my favorite, but the preparation time makes me want to try more of these side dishes to find the one I do enjoy!

As for the chicken, we decided to do a simple spice of garam masala. For Christmas a couple years ago, Matt's mom got us a beautiful set of Indian spices from White Jasmine. White Jasmine spice mixtures are made by the people who do the Everyday Cooking show out of Madison, WI. They have a great variety of recipes on their website, as well as cooking videos from past segments. Their garam masala mixture is very delicious, and includes cumin, cloves, black peppercorns, coriander, and cinnamon. Matt and I have used this mixture many times, and it is as delicious on tofu as it is on chicken.

To make the chicken, we put a little vegetable oil in a skillet, then sprinkled the seasoning over each side of the chicken. We then cooked the chicken in the skillet for maybe 15 minutes (until no longer pink), and our meal was complete! The chicken turned out delicious and was incredibly easy to make. Overall, the meal was pretty good. I could see making it again (especially the chicken!!).