Trader Joe’s Tandoori Style Butter Chicken

I don’t know what it’s like in your neck of the woods, but here in the Seattle area there are a plethora of really good Indian restaurants. In case you didn’t know, many of the high tech companies that dot the Seattle area and much of California have many Indians working there (along with people from all over the world but by far the largest majority of them are from India). Of course, when they move overseas, they bring their food with them.

When I worked at Microsoft, I went out many times with my Indian co-workers. Most of them are serious foodies when it came to Indian cuisine. Many of the Indian restaurants around here serve a variety of regional cuisines, and some specialized in a particular region. Most of them that I worked with were devout vegetarians. The funny thing is at the Microsoft cafeterias it used to be hard to put together a vegetarian meal that was quick and easy for them. Many of them turned to cheese pizza by the slice. Many of them put on a ton of weight after a year or two year. They called it the Microsoft 10. Similar to the freshman 10. That was a long time ago and now you can find decent Indian food everywhere.

Trader Joe’s has been great at bringing us cuisines from around the world and they have been especially great at Indian food. Some directly from India and some made here in the USA. Lately, I’ve been seeing a lot of Indian food in the fridge section and as always I’m on the hunt for good and quick lunch items to zap in the microwave. I’ve seen this Tandoori Style Butter Chicken a few times, but finally picked it up.

What you have is a single dish. The Tandoori Style Butter Chicken (I doubt they are really cooking in a Tandoori oven, they are referring the combination of spices) with Butternut Squash, Spinach and Peppers on Rice. Typical of these one stop meals, you stick it in the microwave and but this one you don’t lift the corner. Not sure why, but it worked without blowing up the container.

I really liked this dish. It had the right combination of spice and heat. Plenty of chicken and not too much rice. The flavors melded great together. There was a few amount of squash, but almost wished there was more. Also, there were a few leaves of spinach sprinkled about again, I wished there was more, but it could be there just for looks to break up the reddish monotony of the color. I was pretty full after I ate the whole thing which doesn’t usually happen for these Trader Joe’s dishes. I think this is an almost perfect take to work, eat at your desk lunch item. I would rate this right up there with a decent Indian restaurant! You might have curry breath afterwards, so eat some mints, but it sure tastes good going down! Trader Joe’s carries many Indian themed items in the fridge section lately and I’ll probably pick up a couple more for future review, some of them vegetarian!

I’m going to rate this 8 Bells! 

Update 10/28/12

Looks like the Tandoori Butter Chicken might be discontinued! Darn, it was pretty good!

4 Comments

  1. This is my *favorite* Trader Joe’s entree, and I was very disappointed to hear from my local TJ store manager that they’d stopped carrying it because “it wasn’t a good seller.” What? It was fabulous!

  2. Please bring back the Tandoori Butter Chicken!!! Live in San Diego and want it back at the Carmel Mountain location…it’s the best!!! 🙂

  3. I third the above.
    It was my #1 all-time-fave TJ’s product, and I practically lived on it for two years.
    (And it sold out FAST in Brookline, MA!)
    Anyone have any clue who made it, or whether the same thing (or something similar) is available elsewhere?
    If it isn’t a violation of this blog’s ToS, please let me know of any leads:
    [email protected]
    or just leave any suggestions in comments.
    Mod’s, if that’s a no-no, please accept my apologies and feel free to edit that out, or delete my whole comment.

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