Healthy, Flavor bursting Grilled Chicken Tikka

I’m always on the quest for healthy, yet really flavorful food. It’s hard to pass up all the food that isn’t good for you because let’s face it, it tastes so good despite being calorie laden and not so good for you.

Imagine my delight at mixing a zillion different recipes to find a delicious chicken breast, flavored with Indian spices (that were already in my pantry I might add) marinated in a greek yogurt that is full of flavors that weren’t boring, yet were crazy tender and juicy and also very low calorie!?!?! (cue the happy dance)  The fact that is is super easy to make is just an added bonus.

I love Indian food, but at restaurants sometimes the sauces that things are in are calorie laden with oil or gasp, full fat delicious coconut milk. So I started researching different Indian spices and realized that a lot of them were already in my pantry.

I love chicken tikka because it is so tender. I mean when you take a bite of it, it almost melts in your mouth. I also like the burst of flavor it has. So I started to play around and I’m loving this chicken breast. It’ not a tikka because its not made in the tandoor oven, but it’s grilled on a hot grill so the final product is similar.

I serve this along side a cool yogurt with cucumber (do you see a similar theme here ….kind of like an Indian raita?) I also found the dish needed a little something extra so I served it along side a tomato salsa. It really rounded out the taste sensation for me: a bursting flavor of a really tender chicken, topped with the cold fresh tomato salsa dipped into a creamy, tangy yogurt dip!

Make enough for lunch the next day, for the chicken chopped up and served over lettuce is quite satisfying as well!!

Yield: 6

Healthy, Flavor bursting Grilled Chicken Tikka

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Grilled Chicken tikka at home!

Prep Time 45 minutes

Cook Time 15 minutes

Total Time 1 hour

Ingredients

Chicken Tikka Marinade

• 2-2.5 pounds chicken breasts, boneless and skinless
• 1 cup Greek yogurt
• 1 tablespoon lemon juice
• 1 tablespoon cumin
• 1 tablespoon turmeric
• 1 tablespoon ginger, grated on a microplane (about a 1" piece off of the piece of ginger)
• 3 garlic cloves, peeled and grated on a microplane
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon cayanne pepper

Dipping Sauce

• 1.5 cups greek yogurt
• 1 cucumber, I prefer persian, but any you have will work
• 1 tablespoon lemon juice
• 1 tablespoon dried oregano
• salt to taste

Tomato Salsa

• 1 pound roma tomatoes, diced into tiny bite size pieces
• 1 tablespoon minced onion
• 1 garlic clove, peeled and minced
• 1 tablespoon basil, minced
• 1 teaspoon olive oil
• salt to taste

Instructions

1. Cut chicken into strips and pound to about a half an inch thickness.
2. In mixing bowl, stir together all ingredients for the marinade, then add chicken strips and let marinade for a minimum of 8 hours in the refrigerator. (Can be done a day ahead.)
3. Once you are ready to grill, get grill to a very hot temperature.
4. While grill is heating up prepare the Yogurt dipping sauce and Tomato Salsa.
5. Stir yogurt for dipping sauce together with lemon juice, oregano and grated cucumber and salt to taste,
6. Let set while grilling chicken.
7. For salsa stir together diced tomatoes, minced onion, minced basil, minced garlic, oil and to taste in one bowl.
8. Then sprinkle salt to taste over the top. (the salt will help release the juices of the tomato)
9. Let set for 15-30 minutes. Then stir one last time before ready to serve.
10. Once grill is hot, grill chicken for about 5 minutes on one side, then flip and cook until cooked through. Move chicken once on each side to get good grill marks on the chicken.
11. Once chicken is cooked, remove from grill and serve with the tomato salsa a top of them and dipping sauce on the side.

Nutrition Information:

Yield:

6

Serving Size:

6 Servings
Amount Per Serving: Calories: 266Saturated Fat: 1gCholesterol: 100mgSodium: 600mgCarbohydrates: 10gFiber: 2gSugar: 5gProtein: 42g

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