Tandoori Chicken - HISTORY AND RECIPE

Ladies & Gents, as promised, I hereby present you the fifth dish of our 100 Asian dishes - the history and the recipe of one of the most cherished Indian dishes of all time - Tandoooooooooooooooooooooooooooori Chicken!!!  (notice the ‘o’s? *insert indian accent*)

First of all, I want to apologize for this post being a little late but I promise we will make it up to you later this week with a SURPRISE which we’re pretty sure you guys will love.

With that being said, LET’S DO THIS!!!!

Tandoori Chicken 101

Guys, Indian cuisine is exquisite. I mean there’s gotta be a reason why their food is expensive and why the cuisine stays famous. But here’s something cool; for majority of the Indian dishes, they are not always about the looks - they’re ALL about the taste. Their cuisine has the only dishes in the world that do not need a thousand garnishes (no offense le' French) to look pretty ‘cos the taste makes up for everything. After you’ve finished this post and finally cook your own tandoori chicken at home...just take a big bite outta that tandoori chicken, you’ll know what I am talking about! It really is food porn, I tell ya!

We know many of you would have had tandoori chicken at some point in your life or if not, you would want to since it is such a well known dish but we also know for a fact that tandoori chicken sold at Indian restaurants are SO DAMN EXPENSIVE! Some Indian restaurants charge at least 20 dollars for half a chicken, about 30 bucks for the whole. 30 frickin’ dollars! I mean you can buy at least three meals with that money. The price kind of varies depending on where you live but we’ve even seen a restaurant which sells their tandoori chicken for a hundred dollars. But it’s insanely good and they happen to have regular customers! While a lot of us may think it’s overpriced, the reason why it is not cheap is simply because the dish is legendary and its taste, admired by people like us all over the world. Now, the price factor is also the reason why we wanted to share with you how to make this dish at home which will save you a lot of money. So first let’s take a look at the history of Tandoori Chicken and how it invaded the world.

Tandoori Chicken is a type of chicken dish that is pre-marinated with yoghurt, cooked in a tandoor (Indian cylindrical clay ovens used for cooking & baking). The chicken may be grilled or roasted. The dish originated from the Punjab region of India and as we digged a little bit deeper, we found out that the dish even could be dated back to the Mughal period of India. Mughal period began in the sixteenth century and until 18th century, North India was ruled by a Muslim Turkic dynasty.

We stumbled across something really cool on the Indiamarks website. They provided us with a lot of info on the history of this dish. On their blog they said and I quote:

“A man named Kundan Lal Gujral ran a restaurant called Moti Mahal in Peshawar before the partition of India. Trying out new recipes to keep his patrons interested, Gujral tried cooking chicken in tandoors (clay ovens) used by locals until then to cook naans (bread). The tandoors are bell-shaped ovens, set into the earth and fired with wood or charcoal reaching temperatures of about 900 degrees. Gujral was able to cook the tender chickens in these ovens making them succulent inside and crispy outside.

“After the partition in 1947, Punjab was partitioned with the Eastern portion joining India and the Western, Pakistan. Peshawar became part of Pakistan and Gujral found himself one among many refugees fleeing the rioting and upheaval by moving to India. He moved his restaurant to Delhi in a place called Daryaganj.

“The Tandoori chicken at Moti Mahal so impressed the first Prime Minister of India, Jawaharlal Nehru that he made it a regular at official banquets. Visiting dignitaries that enjoyed Tandoori Chicken included American Presidents Richard Nixon and John Kennedy, Soviet leaders Nikolai Bulganin and Nikita Khrushchev, the King of Nepal, and the Shah of Iran. The fame of Tandoori Chicken led to many derivatives like Chicken Tikka Masala and Butter Chicken, commonly found in menus in Indian restaurants all over the world.”

Credit: Indiamarks.com - http://www.indiamarks.com/tandoori-chicken-recipe-history/

Pretty fascinating, yes?

But, how do we make this amazing dish? What say we jump into that?

Recipe

Big question: Is Tandoori without a tandoor possible? YESS!!

Of course not everyone of us owns tandoors in our kitchens. But, don’t fret boo, we know just a way to still make a delicious tandoori chicken without tandoor.

You will need:

Whole Chicken (cut into 10 pieces)

Garlic (chopped) (4 gloves)

Ginger (chopped) (5 big slices)

Red Chili Powder (2 Tbsp)

Turmeric Powder (1 tsp)

Garam masala (1 tsp) *important*

Cayenne pepper (1 tsp)

Plain Yogurt (200g) *important*

Salt (2 and half tsp)

Lemon (1)

Charcoal (one small cube to smoke)

Cilantro (2 Stalk)

Butter (1 Tbsp)

Cooking Oil (2 Tbsp)

Cooking Instructions

-Cut whole chicken into any size you desire. Don’t forget to slice on top of each chicken piece make it cook faster and absorb more marinade.

-Then let’s season the chicken with salt, cayenne pepper and garam masala first. Then mix them well together.

-After that, finely chopped garlic and ginger. Follow by plain yogurt, red chili powder and turmeric powder.

-Marinate the chicken for an hour. (If you marinate one day before, the chicken will give you much better taste and flavor!)

-To start cooking 1 tbsp of cooking oil into the pan and 1 Tbsp of butter.

-Place your chicken pieces one by one skin side down ( If u removed the skin, remember which side is skin size).

-Cook each side for one and half minutes. After cooking around 5 to 10 minutes until they will turned into orange golden color and crispy outside.

-Place your chicken into large bowl to carry on smoking process. 

- Make small gap in the centre to put a small glass. You will find out why in below.

Next step: Smoking the chicken

-To get the real tandoori chicken flavor without tandoor we need to smoke our chicken.

-Just put your charcoal into the fire. When it turns red put it into small glass(shot glass will work fine)

-Place the small glass into the gap between. Now pour your 1 Tbsp cooking oil.

-When smokes starting to come out cover the bowl with a lit. Leave the smoking process about one and half minute.

-Finally, you can enjoy your tandoori chicken with the same taste and flavor without cooking it in the real tandoor.

-You may also place chopped cilantro and squeeze lemon juice on your tandoori chicken!

Guys, if you run into any problems with the cooking, please don't hesitate to ask questions on our FaceBook page: https://www.facebook.com/seriousbitesfoodreviews/ 

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Take care y'all and the next post will be in a few days <3