So there’s a bit of a back story to this one. My husband loooooves chicken tikka masala. But not just any chicken tikka masala. Specifically he liked the chicken tikka masala (CTM) from a local restaurant (Godavari formerly known as Sue’s). We were supposed to go there for his birthday last year but they had closed. He was devastated.
Since then, I have been trying to find a replacement for him. When we lived in the city, I think we tried no less than 10 different Indian restaurants and none matched up. Then I moved on to making my own from canned curries to from scratch. So we decided to pit them all against each other at once. Coincidentally this same week, I found out that the above restaurant had reopened under the name Shezan with the same cooks and recipes so we decided to get some of theirs as well for the true comparison.
We had six competitors for the evening:
- Sukhi’s Frozen Chicken Tikka Masala
- Saffron Road Frozen Chicken Tikka Masala
- Neera’s Tikka Curry
- Maya Kaimal’s Tikka Masala Curry
- Shezan‘s Chicken Tikka Masala
- And I made the Chicken Tikka Masala recipe from scratch out of Curries (with some modifications that I will post at another time)
All of the packaged items came from Whole Foods. The frozen CTMs contained chicken. For the two simmer sauces and the homemade CTM, I pan fried some chopped chicken thighs and then added them to the sauce to simmer.
Our rice and naan came from Shezan. As long as they were the same for the whole tasting, it didn’t really matter where they came from and it was a lot easier to just pick them up if we were already picking up the CTM.
I was making an evening of it so we got some items for the side. The mango lassis were made from scratch. I’ll have another post on those in the future. They were delicious!
The samosas are also by Sukhi from her deli fresh line and they are amazing. The chutney that comes with them is particularly wonderful. Highly recommend these.
The Rating
In order to make this as fair as possible, all the CTMs were put into the same white bowls and given numbers. Only I knew what numbers corresponded to which CTM. You can see the cute little themed numbers I made for the event. Watch for a post on Sunday about those 
Tasters put rice in the middle of their plate and then the CTM all around. They were then instructed to taste each one and rate them using score cards:
The qualities being rated on were:
- Flavor
- Spiciness
- Aroma
- Aftertaste
- Texture
- Overall
We found that the aromas all mixed together so in the end we didn’t bother to count that one. Aftertaste was also ambiguous as everyone interpreted it differently.
We also found that the most effective and/or fair way to do the taste test was to go once around clockwise and give scores. And then do a second taste test around counter-clockwise for calibration.
The Results
Here are the final scores (averaged over 4 voters):
| Category | Shezan | Maya Kaimal | Homemade | Sukhi | Saffron Road | Neera |
| Flavor | 4 | 3 | 3.5 | 3 | 2.25 | 1.5 |
| Spiciness | 3.5 | 3.5 | 2.75 | 2.5 | 2 | 2 |
| Aftertaste | 3.75 | 3.25 | 2.75 | 2.5 | 2.5 | 2 |
| Texture | 3.5 | 3.5 | 3 | 2.25 | 2.5 | 1 |
| Overall | 4 | 3.5 | 3.5 | 2.625 | 2.25 | 1.75 |
| Total | 18.75 | 16.75 | 15.5 | 12.875 | 11.5 | 8.25 |
The clear winner was Shezan’s. Although it appears Maya Kaimal’s came in second, during post rating discussion everyone agreed the homemade was better. But Maya’s is a good substitute if you don’t feel like putting in the effort. Makes for a quick dinner meal. The others fall off from there.
I had a great time theming the event and will probably try it with some other foods in the future. I’ll be posting the recipes for my CTM (I modified it a bit from the book) and mango lassi as well as a Silhouette post on my tent cards for numbers in the near future.
