Tandoori chicken recipe

Fresh fried tandoori chicken

So, there is my wife and her cravings for Indian food. Dear husband, go figure and cook something for me. Hmm. Yeah, I really do enjoy Indian food. But I think I wish I had a BBQ grill or a earth hole tandoori in which I could make stuff so it would be perfect. But I don’t. Never mind. I can simulate I think and off I go, shopping. What will I make? Let’s keep things basic and simple and make a tandoori style chicken breast, bake some naan bread and get a spinach raita. And because I am lazy, it’s going to be a 3 part blog entry. Let me start with the chicken. I bought 2 beautiful chicken breasts, and this is what I need alongside:


Ingredients:

• 1/2 cup of plain unsweetened yogurt
• 3 cloves of pressed garlic
• Ca. 2 cm. of ginger, diced finely
• 1 tbsp. ground cumin
• 2 tbsp. fresh lemon juice
• 1 tbsp. cayenne pepper
• 1 tsp. ground coriander
• 1/4 tsp. ground cloves
• 1/4 tsp. ground cardamom
• 1/4 tsp. fresh-ground black pepper
• 2 red hot chili paddies
• Salt and pepper to taste

Cut some incision in the skin of the chicken in which the marinade can penetrate, put aside. Ground all the spices, cut the ginger and the chili finely, press the garlic and mix all the ingredients in a bowl to get a nice marinade going.

Tandoori yogurt marinade

Put the chicken in the bowl and rub the marinade into the flesh. Then immerse the chicken in the marinade.
Cover the bowl with a transparent foil and place it in the fridge for at least 12 hours to let the marinade penetrate into the flesh of the chicken. I first take the chicken out of the marinade and let the excess marinade drip of the chicken breast. 

Chicken taken out of the marinade ready for grilling

By the way, the tandoori chicken is called this way because of a tandoori oven that is used to make the chicken. A tandoori is a traditional Indian clay oven in which the chicken usually is being prepared. Of course I am not having a clay oven and I don't have a BBQ grill, so I must find another way on how to grill the chicken. As we got gas in our apartment I once bought cheaply a kind of a grill roast in which you can put the chicken inside and then hold it over the gas flame. Works like a gas BBQ, only not so conveniently. So now I pop the chicken in my “hand grill” device and let it fry for 1 - 2 minutes from each side over the gas flame until both sides are crispy and well fried on both sides.
After this is done, I pop the chicken in the preheated oven (at 100 degrees Celsius) for about 10 minutes to cook the chicken completely through. But I don’t want the chicken to dry out. So this is a critical phase. I try to press on the chicken fillet to feel if it’s well done. I press with my knuckle into the chicken meat and if it feels soft, it’s not cooked through. If you can feel the meat getting tight be ready. Once it’s as tight as your palm when it’s tensed up, that’s what you are looking for. If you have a meat thermometer, the chicken needs about > 70 degrees Celsius. So once you reached that, you can start thinking about taking it out. Chicken really does not need to cook a long time. The longer you cook chicken, the more you will force the juices out of the meat and the chicken will taste dry and boring. So check the cooking of the chicken and then take it out as soon as possible for best taste. So we got the chicken tandoori done. Stay tuned for the next two parts of the receipt, coming up soon.