This restaurant-style Tandoori Chicken will look good on any table spread. Mouthwatering, spicy and will have you reaching for your next piece.
A tantalizing dish traditionally baked in a tandoor at 500 degrees Celsius. Now not everyone has a tandoor at home, so this recipe has been adjusted to work with a conventional oven. Also, this method tries to keep the ingredients simple, ingredients that you may already have stocked in your kitchen. If you do not have ground Kashmiri Mirch, you can replace it with ground cayenne, hot sauce, or ground red chillies. Traditionally dahi (Indian homemade yogurt) is used during the second margination process. However, you can use any plain unsweetened yogurt. It will still achieve the same great taste.
Tandoori Chicken, in general, is quite healthy when added to a balanced meal plan and can help you keep on track. Take note I am not a dietitian, but I do know that every meal should be balanced. The chilli peppers in the dish despite making you cry from their fiery hotness carry a decent number of vitamins and minerals ranging from vitamin-c to potassium. Garam Masala contains many antioxidants and can help with digestion. I could go on and on about the benefits of this dish.
What Ingredients do I need to Make Tandoori Chicken?
- Skinned chicken legs: There is nothing special here you just need any regular skinned chicken legs for tandoori chicken.
- Dahi or plain yogurt: We typically make our own Dahi at home but you should be able to find it at any Indian grocery store. Alternatively, you can use plain yogurt instead.
- Garam Masala: You can either buy a premixed version or try grinding it yourself at home by following our garam masala recipe. If you make it at home you will at least know all the ingredients that have gone into the mixtures.
- Salt: Just regular table salt but you can with it with kosher and Himalayan as well both taste good when swapped in.
- Kashmiri Mirch: You can either grind your own. Alternatively, grab a box of MDH, Kashmiri Mirch or Deggi Mirch as a substitute.
- Paprika (optional): Just regular paprika that you can get preground at the supermarket. Optionally you can skip this as well.
- Olive oil: Extra virgin olive oil is what we used in this recipe but you can use canola or vegetable if you wish.
- Ground Black pepper: Just your regular ground pepper you can use either preground or crushed black pepper.
- Garlic: Just regular garlic for this recipe you won’t need much so one bulb should be more than enough.
- Red food colouring: We used Red food colouring but sometimes if we have beets around we will substitute beet juice for red food colouring. Optional but otherwise your chicken will not be a vivid red.
- Onions: This is just for garnish so you can skip this if you wish. We slice ours into rings and serve together sometimes.
- Corriander: This is just for garnish so you can skip this if you wish.
Ingredients
1 kg skinned chicken legs
1 cup dahi or plain yogurt
2 tbsp Garam Masala
1 tsp salt
2 tsp Ground Kashmiri Mirch or ground cayenne pepper
1 tsp paprika (optional)
2 tbsp olive oil
½ tsp ground black pepper
2 minced cloves of garlic
4 drops red food colouring or 1 tbsp beet juice
Instructions
Place skinned chicken legs into a large bowl. Add dahi, food colouring, garam masala, salt, oil, Kashmiri Mirch, black pepper & garlic. Then mix well.
Cover and let it marinate overnight or at least for a minimum of 4-5 hours.
Once the chicken has marinated, preheat the over to 425 degrees Fahrenheit.
Place the chicken in a pan make sure to leave enough space, so the chicken legs do not touch one another.
Place the tray in the oven for 25 minutes, rotate the chicken legs then bake for another 25 minutes.
Once the chicken has reached 170 degrees Fahrenheit it's ready to eat. If the temperature is still too low, rotate the chicken and bake at 10 minutes at a time until done.