How To Make Chicken Tikka Masala

-Today we are gonna be cooking a very controversial dish, which some people claim is Indian, most of the Indians will claim it's not Indian -- chicken tikka masala. ♪♪ Hey, guys. Good morning.

This is Chintan Pandya, executive chef for Adda, Rahi, and Dhamaka. First thing is we'll make the ginger garlic paste. Just have some good ginger over here.

it's a very young ginger. I'm just gonna peel it up. Whenever you are cutting your vegetables or anything, I always try to bite into a piece of it, to understand the strength of it.

Because sometimes you'll find big pieces of ginger, but that is tasteless. Now you can see this one is a small, younger ginger and it's very strong and it's got a very beautiful flavor to it. I'm just gonna add an equal amount of garlic in there.

Add some water. Just gonna add it inside. ♪♪ We are ready with our ginger garlic paste.

We have chicken over here. I'm just gonna remove the skin out. So it's a boneless leg.

Original chicken tikka was always made with the leg piece. This is your thigh piece over here. I'm just gonna cut it into two halves.

♪♪ That's the entire chicken we have. Something that we do unique with the kebab marination is that we always do it in a two-stage marination. The first marination we do it, it will lose a certain amount of water from it and then, you drain that water out and you use the meat, so that your final product is not very watery and the entire marination sticks to it.

I'm gonna put in some lemon juice. Just gonna add a little salt to it. And ginger garlic paste.

Chili powder. Mix it up. ♪♪ So that's our first marination.

Just store it near warm or a room temperature for at least an hour, hour and a half. Chicken tikka masala is the national dish of UK right now. It's a mainstream.

In fact, a lot of people claim that the Indian restaurants in London are far more better than Indian restaurants in India. The next thing that we are gonna do is we have mustard oil over here. Make sure it's an edible mustard oil.

That gives a very strong flavor to the meat when it's grilled. We are gonna heat it up to smoking point, and then let it cool down. So, once you reach this stage, just remove it and keep it aside for some time.

Just let it cool down. A lot of Indian cooking, they use, extensively, mustard oil in their cooking. India was ruled by Mongols and then they grew mustard over there a lot.

♪♪ So, now, I'm just gonna add some chili powder in there. When you add chili powder in a lukewarm oil like this, the red color will come out more prominently into it. Just gonna add a little turmeric to it.

♪♪ Ginger garlic paste. Salt. Garam masala.

Garam masala, it's a blend of spice. What we make is predominantly with cumin and coriander, then there are multiple other spices, so there are around 12 or 13 spices we add into our garam masala. Everybody will claim that, "My garam masala recipe's original," and, yes, it's original for them.

Every household, the mother cooks a curry which is traditional to that particular home, so, none of them is wrong, none of them are right. Everybody is perfect. [ Chuckle ] Just adding some yogurt in there.

♪♪ So our second marination is ready. The first marination, the chicken has been there for hour and a half, now. This is the chicken which was in the first marination.

You can see it's oozing out some amount of water in there. Just gonna take this chicken out, add it into our second marination and then just gonna mix it up. What yogurt does is it forms the body of it.

Whatever oil is left, I just put it over it. We never waste any food in our kitchen. So this chicken tikka ideally should stay for a minimum of 6 hours or overnight, preferably in the refrigerator.

The second part is to make the makhani gravy. It's a tomato-based gravy. ♪♪ Alright, so we have our tomatoes over here, ready.

Just gonna add some water in there. Ginger garlic paste. Chili powder.

Some green chili in there. Add a little bit of salt. Then you'll have your cilantro.

Leaves, we'll use it in the final cooking of it. We are just gonna use the stems in here. Just tie it up.

I'm just gonna add in here. I'm just gonna put it on. ♪♪ So, as this is getting cooked, we'll start working on our third recipe, which is the onion-tomato masala.

So something very important about Indian cooking -- when we use a generic onion, we never use a white onion. We only use a red onion. ♪♪ So I'm just gonna put some oil, onions over here.

One thing that I do is, my mentor taught me that season as you cook, season it at every stage, a little bit. ♪♪ So one of the critical part of Indian cooking is the browning of onions, which is one of the most complex things to achieve the right texture or the right taste for ever dish. So you can see that we are now browning our onions to a stage, even if you remove it out, it's getting cooked.

And to arrest this cooking, what I always recommend to people is just add a little bit of water. [ Sizzling ] It will halt the cooking over there. It has gone more brown because of the carryover cooking.

Now, we're gonna add in the green chilies, ginger garlic paste, and then, we're gonna add in the chili powder to it. Always remember that, to get from golden brown to dark brown is very fast. Once the sugar hits that caramel stage, it keeps on cooking very fast, so be very cautious about it and always keep the water along with you.

Just gonna add in some tomatoes in here now. The chicken, which has been marinated for 6 hours, now, we're gonna take it and we are gonna line it on a tray and cook it in the oven. So I'm just gonna put a little bit of sauce on top of it.

It's preheated to 350°, 20, 25 minutes. The chicken tikka is ready. ♪♪ The makhani curry is over here.

We are just gonna remove this thing out, which is the muslin cloth with spices and coriander stems. Press it as much as possible and get the juices back in. ♪♪ That's where the real flavor is.

♪♪ What I'm gonna do is I'm gonna take this, move it to a smaller pot. We are gonna blend it after that. ♪♪ Now, we're just gonna add dried kasoori methi, more of chili powder in there, salt, dollop of butter.

We are gonna add in cream. Stir it up. And I'm just gonna add a little bit of honey.

Some people add sugar into it. I prefer adding honey. I feel it just gives a better texture to your final curry.

So, guys, we have our makhani over here, which is getting cooked now, getting finished off. Onion-tomato masala is ready over here, and then we have the chicken tikka over here, just came out of the oven. Something like this, I'm just gonna cut it into two pieces.

♪♪ Just gonna take the juices in. Now, we are gonna start finishing off the dish. I've got some ghee over here, clarified butter.

We use extensively in Asia, in our cooking. Ghee has a very low smoking point, so you need to be very careful while cooking with it. Add in some cumin seeds.

Some dried red chili over here. Just gonna add some garlic in there. You just brown the garlic a bit.

[ Sizzling ] Just add in a little water to curtail the cooking of garlic further. ♪♪ Add in a little bit of green chili. ♪♪ Just gonna add the onion-tomato masala now.

♪♪ Pour in the makhani. ♪♪ If you need to add just your salt and everything, this is the time you do it. Just gonna add in a little bit of garam masala and then some kasoori methi.

Just mix it up very lightly. Round it off with a little cream. Butter in there to finish the sauce off.

As you can look at the color and the texture now. Cilantro and ginger, you can either add it here, or some people take out the dish and just put it as a garnish. When you just spoon it out, it shouldn't be one person gets extra ginger, the other doesn't get it, but when you do it over here, it's mixed evenly.

That's my theory. I'm just gonna move it. ♪♪ So, guys, here we are at the moment of truth.

So let me start off with just with the chicken tikka masala first. It's got a good color, as you can see. I've got pieces of spices in there.

Chicken is very soft. That's the key -- we need to have it soft. we can't just have it very hard, otherwise, you won't enjoy it.

I'm just gonna take a bite. ♪♪ It's nice. It's got a perfect balance of flavor.

You have that spice coming from behind, but that's what you need. The best part is that the chicken has remained juicy because we made it fresh out of the oven. I'm just gonna now try it with a little bit of the rice.

So we made this basmati rice with ghee in there. ♪♪ Just mix it up. ♪♪ So what happens is, whenever there's a rice or naan with it, it will cut down on a little bit of spice in the dish because it's supplementing it.

There's always a controversy -- who made it? Indians made it, Pakistanis made it, Bangladeshis made it. We don't know.

I say our job is to eat and enjoy the food. For the recipe, there's a link below. Just click on it and see you at one of my restaurants.

♪♪ I don't cook at home, actually. She loves cooking, so it's better for me. She doesn't allow me to cook at home.

She feels I create a lot of mess. -[ Laughs ] ♪♪ Just mix it up. ♪♪ So what happens is, whenever there's a rice or naan with it, it will cut down on a little bit of spice in the dish because it's supplementing it.

There's always a controversy -- who made it? Indians made it, Pakistanis made it, Bangladeshis made it. We don't know.

I say our job is to eat and enjoy the food. For the recipe, there's a link below. Just click on it and see you at one of my restaurants.