British-Indian · Main
Chicken Tikka Masala
Britain's adopted national dish — yoghurt-marinated thighs charred hard, then folded into a silky spiced tomato-cream sauce
- Prep
- 30 min
- Cook
- 45 min
- Serves
- 4
Ingredients
- Chicken thighs, boneless — 700 g, 4 cm pieces
- Greek yoghurt — 150 g
- Garlic — 4 cloves (20 g), grated; ginger — 20 g, grated
- Garam masala — 8 g; ground cumin — 5 g; ground coriander — 5 g; Kashmiri chilli powder — 4 g; ground turmeric — 3 g
- Lemon juice — 20 ml
- Ghee or neutral oil — 40 g
- Onions — 300 g (200 g sliced for sauce, 100 g petals for charring)
- Tomato passata — 500 g
- Caster sugar — 8 g
- Double cream — 150 ml
- Unsalted butter — 30 g
- Coriander leaves — 10 g
- Fine sea salt — 8 g
Method
- Marinate chicken in yoghurt, half the garlic-ginger, half the spices, lemon juice and 4 g salt — 2 to 24 hours.
- Sauce: soften 200 g sliced onion in ghee 8 minutes; add remaining garlic-ginger and spices, toast 1 minute.
- Add passata, sugar and 4 g salt; simmer 15 minutes. Blend smooth; return to the pan with cream and butter.
- Heat the grill to maximum (or a plancha to smoking). Thread chicken loosely on skewers; char 8–10 minutes, turning, until blackened at the edges and 74°C core.
- Char onion petals alongside, 4 minutes.
- Fold chicken and charred onions into the sauce; simmer 5 minutes to marry.