Tandoori chicken recipe with step-by-step pictures – learn how to make indian restaurant-style scrumptious tandoori chicken at home on gas stove and in microwave oven. Tandoori chicken is the most popular chicken starter in India loved by the entire world. This recipe is all about a soft, tender, and moist smoked grilled chicken with flavorful aromatic spices.
Tandoori chicken is a red-colored chicken kabab made by full chicken leg(along with chicken thighs) or whole chicken. Such tandoori masala-coated whole chicken or leg pieces are seen hanging in skewers in the restaurants’ own tandoor zone. Those marinated chicken pieces are put into the tandoor oven along with its skewer unless perfectly grilled or roasted.
In India, this tandoori chicken recipe is also known as tandoori murgh, or murgh tandoor as the chicken or murgh is prepared in a special cylindrical-shaped covered clay oven called Tandoor. Even the spices used in this recipe called tandoori masala take one more crucial part of making this dish to give the best result. Though clay oven can be replaced with other alternatives whenever tandoori masala does not have any substitute.
I was a huge fan of the restaurant-style tandoori chicken recipe as it is soft, juicy, and flavourful at the same time. However, I used to think without using a tandoor how can I make it at home. But some facebook videos over this recipe made me wrong and I first started making this dish by following their way. After making it many times in my kitchen I rectified all of my mistakes and add my own tricks to make it perfect. I started using two steps marination process to make it more juicy, moist, and flavourful. Even my homemade tandoori masala and quickest smoking method help me to make it like a pro.
Though you may use store-bought or ready-made tandoori chicken masala( available in local Indian markets or shopping stores). However, I don’t prefer to buy the packet masala rather I use my own homemade masala made from scratch. That tandoori masala recipe is described below, so you may try it out as I did. Through that recipe, you can easily prepare that ready-made packet-style tandoori masala at home with the common ingredients available in your kitchen.
As in our indian kitchen, people mostly use gas stoves for cooking food not even a microwave oven. So I decided to share the easy process of how to make tandoori chicken recipe at home on the gas stovetop. Though I discussed the microwave oven method too. Use any one of these two methods at your convenience.
The red, rich texture of tandoori chicken seems to be hot and spicy. Actually use of red food color and kashmiri chilli powder makes it more colorful, however, it is not hot at all. But you may avoid the food colour if you feel it is not healthy to eat.
From kids to elders everyone loves tandoori chicken so you may serve it as an appetizer or as a side dish at dinner. Must serve it with few lemon wedges, onion or vegetable salads, and a Green Coriander-Mint Chutney(check from my website). Even the sprinkle of chaat masala and lemon juice must enhance the taste of these hot smoky chicken starters.
Try some other chicken starters from my site
Tandoori chicken recipe on gas & in oven
Prep time: 10 mins
Cook time: 25 mins
Total time: 35 mins
Servings: 4 people
Course: Starters
Cuisine: Indian
Author: Moumita Paul
Ingredients
- 4 full chicken legs(weighs 700gm)
- 1/2 cup hung curd or thick yogurt
- 1 tsp ginger paste
- 2 tsp garlic paste
- juice of 1 lemon
- 1 tsp Kashmiri chilli powder
- 1 1/4 tsp spicy red chilli powder
- 1/4 tsp red food colour(optional)
- 1 1/2 tsp mustard oil
- 1.5 tsp vegetable oil
- 3/4 tsp black pepper
- 1/2 tsp turmeric powder
- 1 tsp cumin powder
- 1 tsp coriander powder
- 1/2 tsp chaat masala
- 1 tsp tandoori masala
- 1/2 tsp black salt
- 1 1/4 tsp garam masala
- 3 tbsp roasted gram flour or sattu
- 1 tsp ghee
- 4-5 tbsp butter
- salt(as per taste)
Homemade chicken tandoori masala
- 1 tbsp Kasuri methi
- 1 black cardamom
- 5-6 green cardamom
- 1-inch cinnamon
- 8 cloves
- 1/2 mace
- 1/4 nutmeg
- a pinch of hing
How to make tandoori chicken recipe with step by step pictures
Prepartation
Making of homemade tandoori masala
- Take Kasuri methi, black cardamom, green cardamom, cinnamon, cloves, mace, nutmeg, hing in a grinder jar.
- Then grind it together to make a fine powdered homemade tandoori masala. Keep it aside for later.
How to marinate chicken
First step of marination
- Take 4 full chicken leg pieces that weigh 700 gm, even you may take breast pieces too. Clean it in lukewarm water, and squeeze to remove water and make it dry. Keep it in a mixing bowl.
- Then take a knife and make 4 to 5 slits on each chicken piece.
- Marinade the chicken with 1 lemon juice, 3/4 tsp red chilli powder, 1/2 tsp salt, and 1 1/2 tsp vegetable oil.
- Mix it well, cover the bowl with a plate and leave it for 30 mins.
Second step Marination
- After 30 mins, marinade the chicken with ginger- garlic paste, 1/2 tsp red chilli powder, Kashmiri chilli powder, turmeric powder, pepper powder, cumin powder, coriander powder, black salt, 1/2 tsp salt, 1 tsp homemade tandoor masala, or 1 &1/2 tsp store-bought masala, chaat masala, hung curd or thick yogurt, 1 &1/2 tsp mustard oil. Mix it well.
- Lastly, add 3 tbsp dry roasted gram flour or besan or even sattu and 1/4 tsp red food colour. Again mix it well and cover the bowl and leave it to marinade for 2 hrs.
Smoking method
- After 2 hrs, place a small metal bowl in the marinated chicken, burn a piece of charcoal and place it on the same bowl with a teaspoon of ghee.
- That will start releasing smoke, so immediately cover the bowl with a plate and leave it for 10 mins. Within 10 mins, the chicken will absorb the smoke.
- Just after 10 mins, take out the bowl contains burning charcoal.
How to make tandoori chicken on gas stove
- Heat a pan or tawa on low to medium flame, add 3 cubes of butter, let it completely melt down.
- Add the chicken pieces to the pan, cover the pan, and cook it on a slow flame for 10 mins.
- After 10 mins, turn the chicken pieces and again cover the pan to cook the other side of chicken for another 10 mins.
- After this 20 mins of cooking, the chicken will be juicy and tender. Must check it with a knife or fork, if it easily inserts into the chicken, indicates the chicken is perfectly cooked.
- Then remove the chicken pieces to a plate. And put the rest of the uncooked chicken into the same pan and cook it in the same way described above.
- When all the chicken pieces are nicely cooked. Heat a grill pan (or even a tawa) on medium to high heat, add 4 small butter cubes, grease the pan with it.
- Once the butter melts down, then add the chicken pieces to it and fry it from both sides by brushing some butter till the restaurant-style tandoor texture comes.
- The restaurant-style delicious tandoori chicken is ready just on a gas stove or oven, serve it with wedges of lemon, salads, and Green chutney.
How to grill tandoori chicken on direct gas flame
- Grill the chicken directly on gas flame by using a roti grill jali. Similarly, as I did by greasing the butter from both sides of the chicken.
- But don’t put it in the fire for a long time, that can make the chicken dry. As sometimes the same thing happens with the restaurant’s tandoori items.
- Even You may first apply the first part of my pan-fried method. Then you may lastly place the chicken on the direct gas flame to get the best-grilled effect with the same charcoal burnt smoky flavor.
How to make tandoori chicken in Microwave Oven/ in OTG
- Microwave or OTG users must preheat the oven for 15-20 mins at 180-degree temperature.
- First grease the oven’s grill rack with butter or oil, then place the chicken on it. Then you must put a microwave-proof plate under the rack to accumulate the juice coming out of the chicken during grilling. It will prevent the oven from getting messy.
- Thereafter, set the oven in its grill mode to cook the chicken for 10-12 mins for each side. Then check the chicken is perfectly cooked or not by inserting a toothpick.
- After 20 mins of grilling, lastly grease the chicken from each side with butter and grill it from both sides for two and a half minutes to get that perfect charred effect.
Tips
- Here I marinade the chicken almost for 2 hours though you may marinate it for 10-12 hours especially if you are cooking it in oven.
- You may use the same masala for making the other tandoori items with fish, prawns, or even with any meat.
- Here I used milky mist’s probiotic curd or unflavoured yogurt which is thick enough and healthy too. Though you may prepare your own hung curd by keeping the runny curd in a strainer or hang it in a cotton cloth for 30 mins. This procedure will help to remove the excess water from the curd to make it thick as required.
- If the chicken weighs 1 kg to 1.5 kg then cut it into four pieces for making this recipe. If the chicken weighs 1.5 to 3 kg, then cut it into 6 pieces.
- A small size chicken that weighs less than 1 kg is perfect for making a whole chicken tandoor.
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