chicken taking Masala it's not actually an Indian dish believe it or not well chicken tikka is an Indian dish but chicken tikka masala so in a tomato gravy was actually uh invented in Glasgow of all places it's now the national dish of the United Kingdom for good reason it's super tasty now there's a few steps involved there's two marination processes and then a gravy but it's really worth to take the time and make this from scratch one day for your friends and family so let's get stuck in first up let's marinate some chicken I like to use chicken thighs for this recipe and the reason being is because they've got a bit more fat and more flavor if you want to you can use chicken breasts but but fires work better so we're going to skewer this chicken and cook it either of a charcoal or on a barbecue or even in the oven so we're going to trim our chicken thighs up and you want pieces around that size that when we secure a raw kind of of similar size I don't stress too much about the fat I like to leave it on there as I think it you end up with a more moist product that's saying if you do see bits of like excess hard fat you probably can trim that off so the first marination now one thing you'll see a lot in Indian cooking is the requirement for what they call ginger garlic paste and that's effectively equal parts minced ginger and garlic and most Indian households will have the stuff on on Plus or in the fridge at all times so we need this in three points in this recipe so we're going to make a decent batch of it now that'll last us the whole recipe so Ginger garlic in a food processor just a little dash of water to help process process now you're not looking for like super smooth you just want you know like a a coarseish paste not coarse medium course paste there you go it's going to save you mashing and grating a whole bunch of ginger and garlic over and over again and if you've got some leftover just Chuck it in the fridge it'll last for a few days no problem the first marination is really simple ginger garlic salt kashmiri chili powder and the juice of half a lemon gonna give us a nice mix and then we'll let that set aside for half an hour just for all those flavors to get to know each other and the salt to start brining the chicken effectively smells delicious already doesn't it does let that hang out at room temp for the second marinade we need to use some mustard seed oil and we're going to want to temper it so we just bring it up to a point where it starts to smoke and then we'll let it cool down before we add the rest of our ingredients mustard seed oil has a pretty pungent smell as far as oils are concerned and it's this really bright golden color almost looks like saffron and few saffron water or something now to be perfectly honest I have no idea why you heat mustard oil to smoking point and cool it down but in every recipe and every Indian cook I've seen use it they've done this so if anyone knows let me know in the comments why this is a practice that's always done so you can see here it's just starting to smoke and now we know it's ready to go so we're going to pour that into our marination Bowl start building the rest of the marinade we're going to add some more kashmiri chili powder turmeric garam masala ground cumin salt ginger garlic give that a whisk I'm kasori methi I like to break this up a little bit just rub it between your hands and I love the smell of this stuff it has a really authentic Indian Cuisine smell in my opinion and some yogurt whisk that all around and that's our second marinade so the original marinades hang out for half an hour now now we're going to add our second marinade and just fold it through now at this point you can leave this three hours six hours overnight if you wanted to but you need to leave it for at least an hour in the fridge I'm about an hour and a half later ideally I do really like to keep this marinating for longer but Mitchell gets angry anyway so like I said a couple ways to cook this you can just lay this onto a tray in one even layer and cook it into a really hot oven or a pizza oven if you've got or anything like that what you're looking for you know you don't need to cook this all the way through but you do want some Char on the outside so the way that I'm doing it is my preferred method which I've got a I've got my barbecue cranked up outside with charcoal and I'll cook it over that because you get a really nice char but yeah like I was saying you can also put in an oven at 250 degrees for you know eight to ten minutes until you get some nice Char but you don't need you don't need to cook it all the way through because we are going to finish cooking it in the gravy that we're about to make but I like to skewer it up like this and again we're not we're not serving these on these secures so it doesn't need to look absolutely perfect now I ate a lot of Indian Cuisine when I lived in London there's a lot of huge Indian Community and I had a lot of Indian friends there and in my last years I lived in East London which was kind of you know where Brick Lane is and you know it's a big Indian Community and I lived above in an Indian restaurant and I used to go to this restaurant all the time with my mate Sammy sweetheart and logy Bear and we'd get a mixed grill and chicken tikka very fond memories and it was really affordable and super delicious and I'm pretty sure it was BYO as well so we could bring our own cans of whatever and they love me in there now it can be quite spicy if you want it to be this recipe but you can also if you don't want it to be super spicy if you're a bit allergic to spice like Daz or much you can just uh just tone it down on the spices but you will lose a bit of that really beautiful red color from the cashmere chili powder for me and Caitlin we like it spicy so these guys will have to deal with it today all right I'll go wash my hands and then we'll head out to the barbecue now I don't have a Tandoor at home like most people so I think this is the second best option one of these Kettle style charcoal grills work really well I like to hang the skewers across the middle and that way you get good color on the outside and the meat doesn't stick to the grape you can also just do this on a normal char grill barbecue gas charcoal electric whatever you've got if all else fails then just crank your oven to 250 on a tray and pop them in there for 10 to 12 minutes until you start getting some nice color as soon as you see these get good color on the outside pull them off but like I said before you don't need to stress them actually there's a cook through because you're going to finish cooking them in the gravy anyway now to be honest these small round skewers kind of suck because when you try and fluff the chicken it just rolls around a circle so if you can get the flat ones they're much better to get more even color when you flip it on the skewer so chicken's done oh my cookbook if you didn't know I wrote a cookbook the Link's in the bio go order it now we'll leave this to one side and we'll start making our gravy so turn your pot into a medium low heat and get some ghee in there to the Gear we're going to add green cardamom some Cuban seeds some bay leaf I'm just going to infuse that ghee with those spices a couple of red onions I'm just going to slice those nice and fine they are going to get Blended so don't stress too much but you do want them to cook evenly pinch of salt while those onions are softening up I'm just going to dice up four tomatoes a green chili and some washed coriander stalks all right our onions are nicely softened and we're just starting to develop a bit of flavor a little bit of color I should say a bit of flavor also we're really bringing the sweetness out of those onions So to that we're going to add ginger garlic chili powder a little bit of turmeric garam masala and cashews you're sorry Messi stir that around now we'll add Our tomato coriander and chili another pinch of salt and some water so we're just going to let this simmer for about 20 minutes just so everything softens up and then we'll blend it and we'll add our cooked chicken all right it's been simmering for 30 minutes almost now I'm gonna pull out the bay leaf this and if you do see the green cardamom I'd pull those out too but I wouldn't stressed too much if you don't find them all and tomatoes are all nice and tender once I find this last bay leaf we can blend it if I find this last bit of yeah no it was three oh [Music] I guess that's the hang in there all right to blend it now you can just use a stick blender or you can use whatever you want really food processor standing blender I like these because you have to take out the pot but we'll get it till it's nice and smooth foreign now we've got our gravy sufficiently smooth and in all honesty if you do use a standing mixer like a proper blender you will get a much silkier gravy but I think it's a bit safer to use one of those and we're perfectly honest I don't have a big blender so time to give it a last little season before we add our chicken back in give it a taste well it tastes pretty good it needs a little pinch of salt it needs a little bit of honey once I'm going to start splitting just a little bit of sweetness there and then to get it silky smooth we're going to add major flax some homemade butter in there and a little dash of cream all right I'm going to emulsify those in there so you kind of don't want to eat heat on this otherwise you might split some of that no big deal if you don't once it's emulsified you can turn the heat back on nice and low but it's time to add the delicious chicken back Here Comes our chicken and that goes then just a nice low heat stir that through all those delicious flavors marry up together a little taste of the gravy couldn't get in my belly fast enough so disappointed all right time to play a bit of naan some rice just gonna finish this Curry right at the end with a little bit more sorry methi now this is all about that gravy for me then of course a little bit of coriander to tie it all together and there we go chicken tikka masala guess we better have a taste yum the thing is that I know there's a lot of steps in this recipe but there's a reason there's a lot of steps and that's because it just layers up flavor definitely worth taking the time to do it that is so much better than any pack up brought chicken Tikki Masala or any base sauce I hope you've enjoyed this video as much as I've enjoyed making it for you like this video if you took it easy from it subscribe if you're not and we'll see you next week for another recipe peace [Music]