Chicken Tikka Masala — the ONLY easy way to make it at home

chicken tikka masala the great classic of North Indian restaurants in the UK and us frankly it's a dish that I think is best left to those restaurants it's a huge pain to make at home that is unless you have some leftover homemade tandoori chicken around as we established in our previous video linked in the description tandoori chicken is very easy to make at home and just as good as the restaurant product so I say when you make it make twice as much as you need have tandoori chicken one night and then a few nights later throw your leftovers into a curry it's a natural synergy and it makes this amazing dish a breeze to do at home first thing to consider though is the rice with a saucy dish like this you really do want a starch to soak it all up you want aged basmati rice arguably the only white rice that actually tastes like something I'm just gonna make a whole 1 pound package that's a little more than 2 cups honestly I think you can skip this step but if you want a restaurant type product you gotta wash the rice you just pour in some water and swish it around with your fingers and dump the water out and repeat pour in some water swish it all around maybe you rinse with a little bit more water and pour it out what we're doing is dissolving and rinsing away the outer starch coat on these grains if you don't do this the cooked rice will be kind of clumpy instead of fluffy which frankly I'm not convinced is a bad thing but if you want nice individual grains you got to do this a bunch of times until the water is at least starting to go clear you pour the water out for the last time then dump the wet rice into a pan the basic water to rice ratio is 2 to 1 but these grains are already holding some water so you got to account for that I'm pouring in 3 and 3/4 cups water into what was originally like 2 and 1/4 cups of dry rice and I'll do like a heaping teaspoon of salt for all of that but that's really to taste I'm just getting the salt evenly dissolved then tradition calls for us to simply let this soak for a half-hour I honestly don't think that makes a very big difference I think it probably evolved mostly as a fuel saving measure it shortens the cooking time but I'll let it sit there until I'm ready to start cooking the curry let me just turn this guy off I hate his voice sounds like a know-it-all doesn't he hey check out this new Bluetooth speaker I've been using when I cook the commuter speaker from Cove the sponsor of this video whom I shall now take a brief moment to thank this thing is awesome I don't know at what point in my life I settled for tiny terrible speakers back before the days of smartphones everybody had stereos with beautiful sound well now you can have beautiful sound again with this the commuter speaker syncs up really easily to your phone and then I can listen to podcasts nice and loud when I'm cooking welcome to the greatest generation Deep Space nine it's a Star Trek podcast and get this it's water-resistant so if I splatter some sauce on it I can wipe it off no worries it's got this big tactile volume knob on top and then you just swipe left or right to go through a playlist battery life is great up to eight hours and it's got a normal mode and a bass mode I use the normal mode for pod it makes voices ring really clearly and there's no boom when I want boom I can turn the bass on for say music hey check out that guy on soundcloud he sounds real good and you should check out the commuter speaker from Cove because its 65% off if you use my offer code that code and the link are down in the description alright I'll let this guy get back to talking about food so with your rice soaking you can turn to your chicken here's half a batch of tandoori chicken legs from the last video got to pull the meat off in chunks and I highly recommend doing this with your hands not a knife your hands can tell the difference between a delicious hunk of meat and a gross glob of cartilage your knife cannot tell that difference you could cut these into further chunks but I like to leave them as is my favorite Indian place in the world is called Mela it's in Boston and they always have big identifiable shreds and chunks of leg and thigh meat in their curries yes chicken tikka is technically a kebab but I think that a lot of restaurants actually use chicken tikka masala as a way of getting rid of leftover tandoori chicken and chicken tikka is basically the same stuff it's just chicken marinated and yogurt and spices and cooked at very high heat same stuff just boneless and on a skewer only other prep as you can see is to just take a big onion and chop it up nothing fancy just get it into little pieces okay big pan on high heat I'll also get the rice started at this point high heat until it comes to a boil you could put some oil on the pan but I've got some ghee Indian clarified butter do not use whole but burn use oil if you don't have this then in the onion goes really blasting it on high heat I want to get some deep roasted flavor out of the onion they're filled with water those pieces they will not burn as long as you keep them moving okay after a couple of minutes you got some color on them I think it's time to toast the spices this is the leftover homemade masala from the last video you could just use prepackaged garam masala about two tablespoons I'd say move that around and let it toast I'd lower the heat to medium at this point big squeeze of tomato paste goes in a couple of tablespoons at least without the tomato paste the flavor is just kind of flat you need it for acidity and intensity maybe a tablespoon of Kashmiri chilli powder this is the secret ingredient it gives you that beautiful red color with a nice mild heat use more if you want it hotter if you can't get Kashmiri chilli powder use paprika for color and cayenne for heat and I feel like I'm forgetting something I don't know anyway when you're terrified everything is gonna burn a good quality 28 ounce can of crushed Tomatoes goes in deglaze with that oops our rice is boiling over which means it's time to reduce the heat to low let it simmer about 15 minutes it'll be done oh I know what I forgot ginger garlic paste peel and grate your own if you want to but I always just buy it bottled at the Indian grocery a few big spoonfuls of that I should have put that into fry right before I put in the tomatoes but it probably won't matter because we're gonna fry the tomatoes and therefore everything in them I think the key to this dish is to cook the tomato sauce down pretty aggressively stirring it constantly so it doesn't burn nice wide pan so we get plenty of evaporation and ten minutes later enough water has boiled out that it's really caramelizing oh hey the rice is done just turn the heat off leave it covered now is when you put in the cream I did like half a cup there which is conservative I don't like it too rich and then there's the ingredients that eluded me for a long time water a lot of water maybe two cups enough to make the texture light and smooth I know it seems crazy we just spent all that time and effort reducing the water out of the tomatoes but we did that so that we could caramelize them and develop flavor not because we want a dry finished product don't worry this stuff is very intensely flavored it is not going to taste diluted give it a taste it needs salt and needs the other secret ingredient sugar at least a tablespoon this is totally what they do at the restaurant it is essential to get that classic taste now this is when a lot of restaurants would strain this if you want that silky smooth finished texture you got a strain out the solids and dump them but that strikes me as a restaurant nicety that has no place in the home that beautiful smoky grilled tandoori chicken goes in it's fully cooked you're just warming it back up again and at this point I can make a final judgement on texture I wanted to add some more water to loosen it up some more look at that glossy rich roasted sweet sour umami it has all the flavors a little rice on the plate chicken and sauce go on the side or on top you do you and because I'm one of those people who genetically does not perceive cilantro as tasting like soap I will rain down a heavy carpet of beautiful green leaves and that tastes not like a suitable substitute for the restaurant product that tastes like the restaurant product there's tons of leftovers to tandoori chicken the first night tikka masala the next night it is as natural to the home kitchen as it is delicious you gotta try it

Channel: Adam Ragusea

Views: 1,214,642

Rating: 4.9053884 out of 5

Keywords: chicken tikka masala, chicken tikka masala recipe, chicken recipes, chicken curry, how to make chicken tikka masala, indian chicken tikka masala recipe, tikka masala, chicken tikka (dish), how to cook, butter chicken, tikka (food), chicken tikka masala (dish), indian food, butter chicken recipe, indian butter chicken recipe, tikka masala recipe, chicken masala, indian chicken tikka masala, how to make chicken tikka, chicken recipe, chicken recipe indian style

Id: gstyp2ZgZ1s

Length: 7min 49sec (469 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 10 2019