Recipe: Tandoori Chicken

This Week’s Film: Provoked

Cuisine: Indian

Tandoori cuisine refers to the tandoor, a huge, fiery-hot clay oven used to cook tandoori dishes. And although most home kitchens are not able to accommodate such an imposing cooking device, a close approximation may be achieved in a standard oven set at the highest temperature.

Many tandoori recipes start with a yogurt and lemon juice base for the marinade, and then Indian spices are added for flavor and color, including turmeric, cumin, coriander, paprika, chili powder, cayenne pepper, garam masala, garlic and ginger. Chicken, lamb, or even fish may be used as the main ingredient. After marinating for several hours or even overnight, the meat or fish is barbequed to a reddish char.

I used chicken wings in my recipe, with a marinade of plain yogurt, lemon juice, turmeric, curry powder, paprika, cayenne pepper, garlic powder, and freshly shredded ginger root. Traditionally, since tandoori is a dry style of barbeque, the skin of the chicken is removed to eliminate the fat, but I left it on because I happen to like crispy roasted chicken skin. I set my oven for 550 degrees and broiled the wings for 20 minutes, removing them just as they began to char.

The result was fantastic. They were spicy without being overpowering. Crispy and charred without being dry. And juicy without being oily, since I left the skin on. This is definitely a dish that will become recurring favorite in my culinary repertoire.

Here is a link to the Recipe and Photo on ThingsAsian.