Chicken Tikka Masala
I am an Indian-American who works for an Indian consulting firm, and I live in Jersey City’s Journal Square, which is home to the largest Indian community in America. So it’s only fitting that I can cook like an Indian too!
Chicken Tikka Masala is very likely the most popular dish that Americans (and Brits!) order when they go to an Indian restaurant. The exact origin of chicken tikka masala is unknown, but the United Kingdom actually likes to claim credit for its invention!
This results in the joke I have of the UK as a colonial power. When France colonized Vietnam, the Vietnamese people tried French food, really enjoyed it, and incorporated it into their cuisine; pho is a Vietnamization of pot-au-feu, and banh mi is a Vietnamese sandwich served on French baguettes. When Italy tried to colonize Ethiopia, the Ethiopian people also tried Italian food, enjoyed it, and now Italian cuisine frequently shows up in Ethiopia. In the case of the UK, however, rather than Indians incorporated British foods into their cuisine, it was actually the British who realized how terrible their own food is and started importing food from India instead. I do say this in jest as I am a fan of a classic fish and chips with a pint of English real ale.
My own chicken tikka masala has shot to fame within my business school community! The Johnson community organized a charity silent auction during the spring semester of my first year. I decided to put a lesson on how to make my chicken tikka masala up for auction. I came to the Sage Atrium to check the bids my lesson got, and I discovered the sole (and winning!) bid was the Johnson School’s Dean Mark Nelson!
Now, I will bring my recipe out to the world!
Recipe
Ingredients
1.5 lb boneless, skinless chicken thighs chopped into approximately 1 cubic inch cubes
2 Tbsp garam masala (+ 1 tsp for the marinade)
1/4-1/2 cup yogurt (+ 1 Tbsp for marinade)
1 medium onion chopped
1 Tbsp garlic-ginger paste
1 tsp cayenne powder
1 tsp paprika
1 Tbsp sugar
1 tsp turmeric
1 Tbsp tomato paste
1 28-oz can crushed tomatoes
Enough olive oil to thinly coat the bottom of the pans you’ll be working with
Method
Marinade the chicken with 1 tsp garam masala and 1 Tbsp yogurt. It may not seem like a lot, but it’s sufficient to barely cover the chicken. Set the chicken aside for 30 minutes
Fun fact: this bowl spent a night at Dean Nelson’s house. I used this same bowl for the same purpose of marinating chicken, and I forgot to bring it home with me. I got an email from Dean Nelson a few days later telling me to pick it up from his secretary.
Save yourself a headache by pre-measuring the sugar and spices (except garlic-ginger paste) and having them ready in a bowl to pour into the pan when you’re ready to use them.
Pre-heat a large pot and enough olive oil to coat the bottom over medium heat. Fry off the onion until translucent. Then add the garlic-ginger paste and sugar and spices and fry them off until they are fragrant (and probably beginning to make you cough).
Make a well in the middle and add the tomato paste. Fry it off and mix it with the ingredients that are already frying.
Pour in the crushed tomatoes and stir to combine.
Cover, drop the heat to a simmer, and allow to cook for 30 minutes. Give the sauce a periodic stir with a wooden spoon to prevent anything sticking to the bottom and burning. Burning the bottom is the easiest way to ruin a tomato-based sauce like this one.
Not pictured: the pot of wort boiling on the adjacent burner that will hopefully be beer in 5 weeks.
As the sauce cooks, start preheating olive oil in a frying pan over medium heat.
Fry the chicken, ensuring to not take any excess marinade into the frying pan, in batches. The enemy of meat browning is moisture, so you want to avoid extra yogurt (moisture) and crowding the meat (more moisture). Fry the chicken off until they are browned on the outside.
You’ll notice the chicken isn’t cooked all the way through if you just briefly seared the outside. That’s ok. The chicken will finish cooking in the sauce.
Stir the chicken into the sauce and cook for 20 minutes keeping the sauce at a simmer. Once again, be sure to give the sauce an occasional stir to prevent it from sticking and burning.
After 20 minutes transpire, shut off the heat and pour in the yogurt to your liking. The amount of yogurt can be varied, depending on if you want a spicier or creamier chicken tikka masala. Ordinarily heavy cream is used in restaurants. Heavy cream is delicious, but I do need to be watching my weight so I use yogurt instead.
Stirring the yogurt into the sauce will net you the bright orange color you would expect from chicken tikka masala.
Serve with your favorite Indian carbs, be it basmati rice or an Indian flatbread like roti or naan.
I cheated and fried frozen roti to eat with the chicken tikka masala. Also, I spend enough of my day between work and life being a proper Indian boy that I think I’m allowed to have a Japanese beer with dinner.