Food Safari's Tandoori Chicken

Chef floWer's Note:

I seen this on TV, it was an SBS show called Food Safari which is hosted by Maeve O'Meara. The recipe was made by Nighat Hassan a Pakistani chef and she used an outdoors Pakistani oven but I made it on a regular oven. Nighat made it look so simple and it is, I marinated mine for two days and the flavours really enhanced, we served it with steam rice, a large dollop of yoghurt with a sprinkle of cumin powder, tomatoes and lettuce salad with a mint leaf to garnish, but the chef suggested a Pakistani Mint Sauce. We found eating the chicken with the yoghurt enhanced the flavours more. Please note: Marinating time is not included. Enjoy

• Total Time: 40 mins
• Prep Time: 5 mins
• Cook Time: 35 mins

Ingredients:

Servings: 4

• 1 kg chicken thigh
• 200 g natural yoghurt
• 1 tablespoon fresh ginger , grated finely
• 1 tablespoon garlic , grated finely
• 1 tablespoon tandoori paste
• ½ teaspoon tandoori color powder (food colouring, if available)
• 2 teaspoons cumin seeds , ground
• 2 teaspoons ground coriander
• 1 teaspoon garam masala
• 1 ½ teaspoons salt
• ½ teaspoon chili powder
• ½ teaspoon turmeric powder

Directions:

1. In a large bowl, add yoghurt, ginger, garlic, tandoori paste, food colour, cumin, coriander, garam masala, salt, chilli and turmeric bowl and mix well.
2. Once completely mixed, rub mixture into chicken covering all the chicken.
3. Seal chicken in the bowl with cling wrap or zip lock bag and marinate in the fridge for at least 2 hours or up to two days.
4. Pre-heat the oven to it's highest setting and bake chicken for 20 minutes.
5. After 20 minutes reduce the oven heat to 120oC/248oF and cook until tender.
6. Serve with steam rice, salad and plain yoghurt.

Reviews

[~Leslie~]

Excellent Tandoori! We loved this recipe, it was simple to put together and had a really authentic taste. I omitted the food colouring but otherwise made it as written. We'll be making this again, thanks! Made for Aussie Swap! :)

[Mikekey]

I love tandoori chicken and this is really good. I prefer it grilled (I don't have a tandoori grill, though) but for being done in the oven, this really turned out nicely. I am going to give this a try when the weather permits some outdoor cooking! (I have to use up the BIG jar of tandoori paste I bought! :) )

[JustJanS]

We also saw this on TV and have wanted to make it since I saw you'd posted it. I'm glad I did as we really enjoyed it a lot. The only changes I made to the recipe you posted were to use drumsticks and 1 teaspoon of Kashmiri chilli powder. I don't have the fridge space to marinate anything for two days, so slashed the drumsticks to the bone a few times, massaged the mix in really well and left them for two hours. They were fine. We ate our chicken with rice, yoghurt and a simple salad of red onion, cuc, tomato, fresh coriander and lemon juice.