Categories: Food & Drink

Quick and Easy Baked Tandoori Chicken

Tandoori chicken recipe isn’t difficult to prepare at all if you have all the ingredients at home or buy readymade tandoori paste at the hypermarket.

I would rather use the fresh spices well blended with the other ingredients than readymade paste.

In addition, if you wish to make your chicken taste better, marinate the chicken parts with the blended spice overnight or at least an hour before baking time.

I love the taste of the tandoori paste because it is simply different from chilli paste.

Use the accurate ingredients, don’t leave out other spice ingredients because the taste of tandoori chicken would be weird..

Always use plain yogurt instead of fruity yogurt because it will make the Tandoori Chicken taste weird too.

If you are out of yogurt, try replace it with fresh thick coconut milk, which gives the similar milky flavor.

Don’t forget the salads!

You can prepare vegetable or fruit salads while waiting for the Tandoori Chicken baking in the oven.

Since it may take around 45min to an hour of baking time, prepare fresh salads in advance, chill them in the fridge because cold salads makes a perfect complimentary side dish for baked chicken.

Tandoori Chicken Recipe

Ingredients:

Seeds from 6 cardamom pods
2 tsp cumin seeds
4 tbsp plain yogurt
1 large clove garlic-chopped
2 tbsp lime juice
1 inch fresh ginger-peeled and chopped
Salt and pepper
1 pinch ground turmeric powder
1 pinch cayenne pepper ( red chilli powder)
2 chicken thighs or 4 chicken wings-remove skin and fats
Butter for glazing

Salads:

1 tomato-chopped

1/2 large bombay onion-cut into slices

1/2 lime juice

1 coriander sprigs-chopped

Method to bake Tandoori Chicken:

Heat up a small non stick frying pan, add in 1 tbsp of butter, add in cardamom and cumin seeds, heat up until fragrant.
Don’t burn them.
Remove, transfer to a mortar and pestel, crush them into powder form.
Alternatively, you can crush them on a chopping board by rolling the toasted cumin seeds and cardamom with a rolling pin.
In a blender, put in the plain yogurt, salt and pepper, lime juice, the powdery spices, cayenne powder. Blend until the ingrdients turn into a fine paste.
You will have a dark red paste.
Use a knife to criss cross cut the chicken thighs or chicken wings. You can chop them into smaller pieces if you want to.
Then coat all the chicken parts with the spice paste.
Prepare a foil for baking.
Lightly grease the foil with a little butter.
Transfer the coated tandoori chicken parts onto the foil.
Cut the butter into small cubes. Scatter the butter cubes on top of each chciken parts.
Then, cover the chicken with the sides of the foil, to form a package.
Put the foil package with the tandoori chicken into an oven.
Bake for 30-45min until the chicken turn golden brown and a little charred is alright.