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smoothcurvesinteractive · 5 years

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Dad’s Oven Tandoori Chicken

I’m not going to do a bunch of useless exposition. This is my original recipy for Tandoori chicken that can be made most places you can find spices. I call one specific brand of tandoori spice mix, I like this particular brand, but it may be hard to find. It is a dry spice mix, so I suggest you find a dry tandoori spice mix, or create your own to taste.

With that:

3 tablespoons peanut oil

1 thumbs of fresh ginger root (that is, as much ginger as one of your thumbs)

1 chopped roma tomato

1 Onion (ideally walla walla sweet)

1 complete garlic bulb ( T least 7 cloves)

4 cups plain greek yogurt

1/2 can frozen lemonade concentrate (or equivalent highly concentrated lemonade)

1 lemon

1/2 cup sour cream

4 oz dellah tandoori spice mix

4-6 lbs chicken pref dark meat (ideally leg parts, thighs and drumsticks) but whatever you like as this also works for turkey, tofu, lamb, bamboo shoots. Pork Chops. Beef and Goat not so much, )

1 tablespoon ground cinnamon (fresh ground if ya can)

1 tablespoon paprika

1 teaspoon cumin (NOTE, the relatively small amount of cumin)

1 tablespoon dried chili flakes (the kind you put on pizza)

Utensils

Cutting board

Medium sauce pan

1/2 cup measuring scoop

Tablespoon measuring scoop

Plastic or Metal Ladle (NOT WOOD, unless you want the wooden ladle to forever taste like tandoori chicken)

4 quart sized freezer bags (Do not skimp on the bag quality or you will be cleaning up for days)

This tandoori chicken is made in 2 phases over night

Phase 1 Make sure 3 lbs of chicken are brought out of freezer and thawing Pan on stove top turned down low,

Pull the frozen can of lemonade concentrate out of the freezer, set it into the sink so it does not make a mess as it begins to thaw.

4 tablespoons peanut oil (Can use any oil, but peanut oil adds a subtle nutty flavor)

peal and finely dice/mince all that ginger (DO NOT USE GROUND GINGER, FRESH ONLY) Yes, your whole thumbs worth of ginger, yes that is a lot of fresh ginger. Your house will start to smell wonderful and only get better. Put the ginger in the pan with the oil, turn the pan up just a touch while you peal the garlic.

Garlic, A whole bulb, at least 7 large cloves, don’t skimp. chop the garlic, no need to mince the garlic, coarse chop works recipe. Toss this into the pan with the oil and ginger.

Now chop Half an onion and throw it in

Stir. If there is any smoke, or steam, or the oil is changing color you have heat up to high. If the ginger gets scorched, it is ruined, dump it, wipe down the pan, start over.

let the oil onion garlic and ginger simmer for 10 min, the garlic should start to change color, and so should the ginger, and when the onion starts to go clear you are ready for the next step.

Once the ginger has started to get “mushy”

it is time to Add the rest of the dry spices. That is 4 oz of dry tandoori spices, then 1 tablespoon EACH of cinnamon, paprika, dried chilis, and only 1 teaspoon of cumin (do NOT over do the cumin)

Once that is all in the pan, look at the pan and exclaim out loud: “What a bloody pile of goose droppings is this? that looks like a mad man’s amount of spice” This must be said aloud, while facing the pan.

Now that is out of the way:

wash and Chop one whole lemon, into 8ths or 16ths toss it into the pan, DO NOT PEEL the lemon, we actually want what is in the rind of this lemon. Toss the lemon into the pan without abandon, as dry spices will see this as permission to make an attempt to ballistically flee the pan.

finely dice 1 roma tomato and add to the pan

Next add the lemonade concentrate. The lemonade concentrate should be mostly liquid by now.

At this point Turn up the heat to medium, and stir. Make sure the onion and lemon are throughly coated with spicy goo. Once none of the diced ingredients are individually identifiable as anything more than reddish brown lumps it is time to add the dairy to this wonderfully earthy spicy citrusy smelling concoction

Add 4 cups plan Greek yogurt. Greek Yogurt produces best results. The exact amount is not critical, you can easily add 6 cups of yogurt and the chicken will still turn out delicious.

I once only added 2 cups yogurt to this, The resulting spice mix was so intense it could be seen from geo synchronious orbit. If you do adjust the amount of Yogurt, maintain the ratio of 4 cups yogurt to 1/2 cup sour cream.

And yes now add the sour cream. I am quite confident that no self respecting indian restaurant has ever added sour cream to their tandoori mix. But I do, The sweet and tartness contributed by the sour cream puts this tandoori recipe over the top.

Let cook on medium medium low for 20 to 30 mins stir gently, frequently. As before, none of the ingredients should be individually identifiable, everything should be a homogeneous rust red, and it should smell FANTASTIC. You are NOT trying to “cook down” or “reduce” the yogurt or sour cream.

The Mix should “Blop” and attempt to splatter all over your kitchen, just a few times. Do not get the sauce so hot that it "simmers” no neat little bubbles. You know you’ve done good if the sauce tries to spatter the ceiling once.

While the sauce is Bloping

Get about 3 lbs of chicken quartered into pieces sized such that that 3 pieces will HALF fill a quart sized ziplock freezer bag. Again, ideally 3 pieces per bag. I did not specify white meat or dark meat. If you do not like dark meat chicken, Try it with this recipe, it really is better with dark meat, and you won’t be able to tell the difference by the time it is served.

After the sauce has Blopped for 20 min or so, take it off the hot burner, stir it as it cools down. It needs to cool enough to handle without burning you.

Once the sauce is cool enough to handle, put half a ladles worth in the bottom of each plastic freezer bag,

In this next sequence DO NOT COMPLETELY FILL the freezer bags, The freezer bags should be 3/4 to 8/9 full

then put 1 piece of chicken in each freezer bag,

then add a full ladle of sauce into the bag, on top of that piece of chicken.

Repeat until you have smothered each piece of chicken with a ladle of tandoori sauce.

AGAIN DO NOT FILL the bags completely. For quart bags an ideal amount is 3 thighs and 1 drumstick.

Bleed the air out of the bags.

Now, HAVE FUN squish all that sauce around in the bags making sure the sauce is roughly squeezed and massaged into every piece of chicken. Give each piece of chicken a good saucy massage in that baag.

Fun fact: due to the high acidity of this sauce, provided by the the lemon juice , the chicken begins chemically cooking as soon as it touches the sauce.

Once the chicken is throughly massaged and relaxed. wash the bags off, because we all know you made a mess.

Some tandoori recipes have you put the chicken straight into the freezer. DON”T DO IT.

Put the, now clean, bags in the refrigerator for at least 8 hours. Consult a biologist for how long chicken soaking in a miild acid bath could sit at cool temperatures. If for some reason you forget the chicken and leave it in the fridge for a few days it should still be OK once cooked.

It should be noted that this tandoori uses, as it’s base, most of the known raw plant based anti bacterials. (Ginger, garlic, onion, lemon, chili)

(I’m just gonna ignore the fact that we added 2 dary substances that likely contain multiple strains of live bacterial cultures)

This concludes phase 1

Phase 2 Fire or Ice

If that looks like too much chicken for one meal, now is a good time to pop one or all of those bags into the freezer.

This stuff will keep in the freezer longer than non marinated chicken due to the hugh acidity of the marinade, and the face that the chicken has been chemically cooking all the time it has been marinating

Oven:

Pre-heat oven to 375.

Coat a rimmed baking sheet with tinfoil.

Empty contents of freezer bag onto sheet and spread. You may want to add some fibrous vegetables to make use of any extra sauce, bamboo, asparagus, whole baby corn work great.

Put this into the oven on a middle rack

Turn the oven temp up to 425 (Bet ya never saw that coming)

Cook for 8 min

While that is cooking thinly slice a lemon, and make onion strings out of the other half of the onion.

take the stuff out of the oven, turn over the chicken,

put back in the oven for another 8 min

At this point the sauce should be drying out, and tips should star to blacken

pull the chicken out, turn it one more time, cover the chicken with the onion strings, then put the lemon slices on top (The order is actually important)

Put back in the oven and keep checking on it until the sauce drys out. The chicken should be red in color and the tips of chicken are black and the ends of the onion strings have shriveled up and started to turn black.

Note: Only little tips of chicken and sauce lumps should blacken.

take the chicken out and let cool.

and if you followed this recipe you will have delicious chicken AND NO SIDE DISH. Pair this chicken with rice or naan, because we really do need carbs.

#food #indian #chicken #spicy #cooking #diy #recipies #one room at a time #one oven at a time

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