Feb 9, 2016

Indian Chicken Curry Masala

Recently, on my backpacking trip to Thailand, I had a chance to cook Indian chicken for the people there, and it turned out that they completely loved it. I was asked to publish the recipe somewhere, and since I have been blogging about my trip here on medium, I decided to post my recipe too, on medium. So here you go.

Ingredients:

For Marination:

Chicken - 1 Kg

2. Yogurt - 500 Grams

3. Turmeric powder - 2 - 3 tsp

4. Salt - (according to taste)

5. Lemon Juice - 1/2 cup

6. Chilly Powder - 1/2 tsp (optional)

For Onion/Coconut paste:

Onions, sliced - 2

2. Dry Coconut - grated - 200 grams

Other Ingredients

Tomatoes - 1- diced

2. Onions - 2 - finely chopped

3. Garlic - 2 - finely chopped

4. Green Chilies - 4–5 - slit

5. Red Chilies (Dry) - 4–5 (* I know someone who likes to put 17 red chillies in this recipe, if you are up for some adventure)

6. Garam Masala : You need to make a dry, fine powder of the following ingredients to make this masala:

Red Chili, Coriander, Salt, Cumin, Black pepper, Garlic, Star aniseed, Cassia, Turmeric, Ginger, Clove, Black Cardamon, Nutmeg, Bay Leaves etc. You can use 2 tsp of all the above and grind it into a very fine paste. You should have something like this at the end.

7. Ginger - Garlic Paste. Make a paste of 4–5 garlic along with 2 tsp of ginger.

8. Coriander leaves (cilantro) finely chopped (For garnishing)

Here is everything at a glance:

Marination: Clean the chicken. Mix it with half a cup lemon juice. Put 2 tbsp yogurt with 2 tsp of turmeric and salt. You can also use a little red chilly powder if you want. Marinate the chicken for good 3 hours for the best results.

2. Preparation of the Onions-Coconut paste: The onions and the coconut play a major part in bringing the best out of this recipe. You need to cut the onions in slices, and grate the coconut into fine pieces. Once the onions are sliced and the coconuts are grated, we need to char them on a pan. I don’t usually add any oil while charring the onions and the coconut to get that burned taste, but you can go ahead if you want. It should look something like this.

Once the onions turn golden brown, turn off the flame, and let them cool for a bit. Make a paste out of them using a mixer, and you are ready with the coconut and the onions paste.

3. Cooking the Recipe

We need a very shallow dish to cook the chicken using the natural steam that will be generated, causing the chicken to cook completely from the inside, with every ounce of the ingredients seeping inside them.

Add 2 tbsp of Oil into the dish, if you have a non-sticky dish, you may want to lessen the quantity of oil. (Eating more oil is not good for your health)

Put the red chillies in the oil, once the oil gets heated up.

As soon as the chillies start crackling, add in the onions. Fry the onions till they are slightly golden, and once you see the hint of gold, add in the green chillies. Stir them for a good couple of minutes.

Let the onions tell your their golden story

Add in the ginger-garlic paste, and keep stirring everything nicely. Let them all mix together. The more you stir, the more better it’s going to taste.

Once you see the ginger garlic paste settling in with the onions, which should not take more than two minutes, add in the onions-coconut paste that we had prepared earlier.

After stirring the mix for a nice 2–3 minutes, add in the tomatoes. Stir them for a minute and then add a lid on top of the dish. Let the tomatoes cook for a minute. Once you take out the lid, the tomatoes should look a little mushy mushy. You get the idea right.

Stir it for another couple of minutes, and then add the main ingredient, the chicken. The trick now is to make sure you stir the chicken in the mix as much as you can. The more your stir, the more tasty it’s gonna be. So go ahead and flex all those muscles in stirring the chicken in the dish. Once you stir for a good 3–4 minutes, add in the garam masala, and (yes you guessed it right) stir.

Once the chicken is completely mixed with the other ingredients, close the lid of the dish and let the chicken cook with the steam. After 5–10 minutes, make a small vacuum ( an opening ) between the lid and the dish, and let the remaining steam escape. Cook the chicken for another 5 minutes. If you open the lid, you should have something like this.