Wednesday, March 4, 2009

Tandoori chicken without the tandoor



Rather than cooking the chicken at the extremely high temperatures of a traditional tandoor, I've found a couple methods that seem to work very well at capturing the juicy quality of real tandoori chicken.

It's hard to fit most Indian cooking into the thirty minute meal time slot, but this one can be done in under sixty minutes!

Tandoori Chicken

Vegetable oil
3 cloves garlic, crushed
2 T fresh ginger, grated
1 T garam masalah (my favorite mix)
2 t cumin
2 t chili powder
1 c yogurt
1/4 c lime juice
Salt

2 - 3 lbs bone-in skinless chicken parts

In a small skillet, cook the garlic and ginger in oil for a minute or two. Add the garam masalah, cumin, and chili powder and cook for an additional minute. Remove from heat.

Put half the spice mixture into a bowl along with the yogurt and half the lime juice. Set aside.

Add the rest of the lime juice and salt to the spice mix in the skillet. Slash shallow cuts into the chicken pieces and massage the spice mix into each piece.

Preheat the oven to 325. Coat the chicken with the yogurt mixture and arrange the pieces on a sprayed wire rack set over foil-lined baking sheets. Cook for about 25 minutes. Move the rack to the top shelf and turn on the broiler. Broil and lightly char both sides of the pieces.

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