Butter Chicken

In my mission to eat healthier, I’m trying to have my husband and I eat more meals at home, which pretty much means that I’ll be cooking. He doesn’t cook. I don’t know about you, but when I get home from work, I don’t feel like making something that will take a ton of effort.

If you share in this thought process, you’ll love Passage Food’s Butter Chicken Simmer Sauce packet because it is super easy.

In 2013, Mom took me to Disney world to celebrate my graduation from college. On this trip, we discovered one of my most favorite Disney restaurants–Sanaa. This restaurant is at Disney’s Animal Kingdom Lodge, which means that you get to see some pretty amazing animals outside the windows while eating your meal. The food is a mixture of African and Indian inspired cuisine with everything from Tandoori Lamb to a Grilled New York Stip steak. There’s something for everyone here.

Besides starting out with the Indian-Style Bread Service–which is phenomenal, by the way–we both picked the Slow-Cooked in Gravy, Simple and Well-seasoned-Dinner. You get to pick from two different rices and a variety of meats. We both had the basmati rice, butter chicken, and something else. I can’t remember what the other meat was, but I’m pretty sure Mom got the beef short ribs and I got some sort of fish. But when Kevin and I went on our honeymoon last year, we both picked double doses of butter chicken. Mom and I had raved about it so much that he had decided to get whatever I was having.

The butter chicken at Sanaa is made of tender cooked chicken in a pool melt in your mouth delicious sauce. I have cravings for this stuff! In the picture below, from the left, is butter chicken, basmati rice, and some sort of shrimp. (If you follow the link attached to the picture, you can learn about dining with an animal specialist.

So, when I saw Passage Food’s packet of butter chicken wonderfulness at Meijers, I had to try it. As you can probably tell, I have some high standards for butter chicken. And this packet did not disappoint.

While it isn’t exactly the same thing that you can find at Sanaa, I didn’t expect it to. I don’t have fairy dust in my kitchen. Or it could be that I don’t add the optional cream…either way, it’s delicious!

All you do is chop up about a pound of chicken and then sear it in a pan with some olive oil before pouring the beautiful sauce all over it and stirring it to make sure the chicken is all coated. Then, cover the pan and let the chicken cook all the way.

We enjoy our chicken with jasmine rice brought to you by Success Boil-in-Bag. It’s super easy because you cook it in the microwave and it’s a great way to absorb all that wonderful sauce.

This is also something that my husband enjoys. We’ve actually had it two weeks in a row now and he asked me to get lots of chicken and butter sauce packets when I asked him what kind of groceries he wanted this week. Remember how I said you use a pound of chicken? Well, I also make two bags of jasmine rice (there’s probably two-three servings in each bag). When dinner is ready, I get some rice and then put some chicken and an ample portion of sauce on top of it. Then, Kevin puts the rest of the rice in a bigger bowl before dumping what’s left of the chicken and sauce on top of that.

We don’t usually have leftovers in our home. But we certainly have full bellies!

If you’re looking for a quick, delicious meal, I highly suggest that you add this to your to-make list.

Manpuku

2323 Nashville Rd Bowling Green, KY 42101

(270) 904-4663                                     Menu

When Mom and I went out for our weekly dinner last night, we originally went with her choice—Lost River Pizza Company. This place has awesome pizza and we were looking forward to trying their sandwiches, but the parking lot was absolutely packed.

So, I just started driving, neither of us having any other idea of where to go because we’re decisive people after having worked a full day behind a computer screen.

Then I thought of Manpuku Japense Steakhouse & Sushi Bar. It’s a Japanese restaurant that Mom had never been to and one that I hadn’t been to in a year or more. The later hadn’t occurred because I had a bad experience at the restaurant, it was simply out of the way and one that I typically didn’t think of.

Atmostphere

This is a very quite and peaceful restaurant. This is probably due in part to the fact that there were very few people in there, but I think it would still be peaceful otherwise.

As soon as you walk in, you find a small shrine that I think was set up for Buddha with a small sign asking patrons to please not touch.

When you walk through the second set of doors, you’re greeted by a small, welcoming room with walls painted an actually successful shade of green full of tables and booths. When asked, we chose to sit at a booth.

Service

We were greeted by our server as soon as we walked through the doors. Besides asking if we wanted a booth or a table, she also asked if we wanted sushi. I said, “maybe,” and she told me to just let her know. She said something about not wanting to have to take up all the table with the menus (there were apparently three) if I didn’t want any.

She brought our drinks right away and was attentive throughout the meal.

The food also came out at a fairly good pace.

She was also kind to me when I tried to pronounce the appetizer that we’d picked. When I couldn’t say it right, she pronounced it correctly and then told me not to worry about it because she had had to practice saying it correctly when she first started working there.

Food

Said appetizer was fried gyoza. This is something that you may have heard referred to as a “pot sticker” before. I really enjoy them, they’re one of my favorites in fact, but I couldn’t remember having had them fried before and Mom didn’t think she’d ever had them.

They were okay. I prefer the steamed ones I’ve had at other restaurants and even the frozen, store bought sort my husband and I eat all the time.

We ordered the same entree—hibachi style chicken. These came with the chicken, fried rice, sweet carrots, potatoes, onions, zucchini, and mushrooms. The meat and vegetables were grilled with soy and teriyaki sauces. It also game with the while sauce that I know and love from Japanese restaurants and the clear soup that I’ve learned to accept.

Our entrees were quite good, but I’m pretty sure that both the carrots and potatoes were frozen. Both were crinkle cut and the potatoes looked like straight up french fries.

And, after I picked off the zucchini to give to Mom as I usually do, it seemed like I didn’t have much food left on my plate. That tells me that there wasn’t a very balanced ratio of food.

Return Trip

I’m honestly not so sure about this one. The food wasn’t bad and the service was good, but there are other Japanese restaurants close by that I think have better food.