Chicken Tandoori

Not a new scent, but rather an Indian dish so delicious I decided I would create it at home, despite the fact that I have neither a tandoor nor a grill.

Here are the items you need to make chicken tandoori at home:


Plain yogurt, lemon or lime juice, garlic, and tandoori spice mix.
Sure, you could make your own tandoori spice mix, but since I left the mortar and pestle back in the old county, I went with ready-made. I used two containers of yogurt, two cloves of garlic, and probably one lime's worth of juice. Then I added maybe two tablespoons of the powder, but I think it could have used more, so be liberal. Salt, pepper. Notice anything missing? The chicken. Forgot to take a picture of that. I used boneless skinless thighs but whatever works for you.

Mix that stuff up in a bowl (non-reactive, glass is good), make some slits in the chicken, chuck it in the bowl. Let the chicken sit in its yogurt bath overnight. You could also use a big Ziploc if you roll like that. Just be sure the chicken stays immersed. The more hours it stews the more tender and delish the meat is. In the fridge, not on the counter, people, and if you forget about it past 24 hours, you may need to to start over. No one dies from my cooking tutorials. No one puts Baby in a corner. Sorry, I had to say that.

A stew of spicy salmonella. Don't eat this.

Here's what I had for dinner when I realized the damn tandoori would need to marinate overnight:

Smoked oysters, mm. Skip the ones in cottonseed oil--bad for you--and the ones in water--tasteless. Olive oil, mmmm, just right.

Unfortunately I forgot to take any pictures the next day. Whoops. So you can grill these (and you'll have to imagine "these" as yogurt-sodden chicken thighs), or bake them. I used my grill pan for the creation of professional-looking grill marks, but I think next time I'm going to bake them because my house still smells like an Indian restaurant four days out.

Now, do we all know that it is really okay for chicken to have a hint of blush pink? It will not kill you and it tastes much juicier and more mmmm. You're going to have to trust me on this one, and if you don't, my Dean and Deluca cookbook, which I can't find online, also says it's okay. And we know they must be authorities on food because who else would charge $25 for twelve biscuits?