Recreating Madhur Jaffrey's Chicken Tikka Masala From Taste | Bon Appétit

hi everyone its Priya we are in the BA test kitchen for a super-secret conversation about Chris Morocco today we've got world-famous chef mother Joffrey together we are gonna put Chris's super taster abilities to the test so this dish is my chicken tikka masala not chicken tikka masala chicken tikka tikka masala because a little piece of meat cubed meat and it's very popular throughout Britain so we are challenging for us to replicate this exact dish with the same ingredients and only two days he'll be able to taste it smell it touch it but at no point will he be able to actually see the dish at the end of the second day we're gonna come back taste Chris's dish and I'll be the judge I'll grade him I would be very nervous if I were Chris no not at all just try to stay quiet yeah no kidding mmm it smells good I'm getting some kind of like Korea SH flavors like a little bit of like chili mixed with like the possibility of like some kind of cumin coriander situation definitely like a warm spice undertone possibly like cinnamon or clove okay are we talking about like a yeasted kind of naan style bread okay got it oh so got really nice pleasantly charred very fragrant piece of what seems to be chicken here it's probably a chicken thigh grilling I'm guessing it's got a yogurt marinade on it and just has like a real like richness and warmth and tenderness it's too sharp and not rich enough to be like butter chicken to my mind to my mind this is something in the chicken tikka masala world this to me is kind of you know giving me more of kind of like a turmeric cumin coriander black pepper chili powder kind of curry spice world but like possibility of like some tomato happening in there - all right listen sometimes like the damnedest things just like trip you up I was like what them is that but it was just a piece of garlic so yeah it's like actually like there's not that much sauce in this bowl and I'm trying to find you know big obvious pieces of spices like a you know kind of whole cardamom but I'm not yeah I'm not finding anything I'm kind of guessing maybe it's just like a tomato puree it's something where we don't have pieces of tomato it's just a pureed tomato there's a lot of richness there's a lot of spice so these are the spices that I'm thinking about and I'm not sure entirely where to place them in terms of the chicken marinade or the sauce cardamom cumin coriander ginger question mark black pepper Brad what did I say I had like one I had one request I'll send you to station two so [ __ ] fast man whatever I can hear you but Arya Stark over here I know exactly where you are yeah thanks Brad's like got me off distracted I believe this to be chicken tikka masala again this is not my area of expertise at all the person I kind of like just from knowing you know her from like being in a lot of video I would say like possibly like a modder Joffrey you know like she's somebody who's kind of like cooking you know sort of royalty for like Indian cuisine I feel like I have enough of an idea to kind of like get going all right so we've got spices a warm spice cinnamon clove curry ish spices coriander and hot chilli powder on chicken thighs I feel pretty good about this we're gonna head down to the supermarket hopefully all this stuff will be there oh yeah we're gonna head out [Music] so we're talking strategy here there's not too much I'm getting by way of vegetables I need some garlic and I need some ginger and that's kind of if everything else is a spice a protein or cooking fat and then like our flatbread situations ginger add some zinc garlic I believe that there is onion in the sauce okay so we've got spices here I was experiencing a certain range of warm spice flavors akin to what you'd find like in a garam masala which is kind of like the blend of spices that are used in curries let's pick one off the shelf and check it out all right before we get ahead of ourselves so this is garam masala this one has cumin cinnamon cardamom cloves and mace so there's that kind of cinnamon and clove thing that we are kind of picking up I'm gonna get this alright we're just gonna take things one by one so we've got cumin coriander garam masala turmeric cardamom I want some mustard seeds alright so I've got a couple of chili options I think we do have Kashmir a chili powder in the kitchen which is a good option as well boneless skinless chicken breasts I wasn't looking for tomato but tomato found me oh here's the ghee he is cultured clarified butter alright oh hey guys what's up yeah nothing to see here so I got good quality whole milk yogurt yogurt is going in the marinade flatbread options I'm assured that I won't be graded on the flatbread itself but I don't trust anyone I think that's it okay so just got back from the supermarket and I think it's imperative that we get some chicken in yogurt marinade as soon as possible so about a cup of yogurt let's assume that there's some garlic and some ginger in there a little bit umami a little bit of pungency some salt let's just taste some chili powders all right so this is a hot paprika ooh I like that it's got some heat fruitiness and some depth I'm planning to be underwhelmed by this cayenne which looks like it's oxidized and old it's so hot it's like the friend who shows up at your party like already drunk you know it's just like where the [ __ ] is this going so this is Kashmir a chili powder mild at Cayenne is still [ __ ] burning I'm so annoyed oh that's really nice - smokey fruity they call it mild but it's hot I like that my might go with that we're just gonna start with like a half a teaspoon there and then I was getting this persistent cardamom and I'm trying to find you know big obvious pieces of spices like a whole cardamom but I'm wondering if like maybe that's because there was just garam masala in the marinade as well as in the sauce or in one or the other no this is really hard so this is garam masala which is cardamom clove black pepper cumin and mace I mean who's to say it couldn't be buttermilk instead of the yogurt or a combination okay I'm gonna go with this for the minute the chicken just went into the marinade I'm just gonna set that aside at room temp in an hour so I'm gonna grill it off spices kind of come up with like a curry type powder of my own devising cumin seeds black pepper we're gonna do some coriander hey Sola can I ask you a question about technique real quick just ignore what's happening in here okay but if I were to say hey I want to make a kind of a spice and like aromatic paste do you think I need to toast my spices first or do you think they're gonna know usually you don't usually yeah do you feel like it's a fairly common practice to puree like diced onion with water I feel like I've seen you do it like you did it with your briyani thanks dude I think I'm gonna hold off on adding any additional cinnamon or clove to the dish and kind of lean on the fact that it's gonna come through on the chicken itself cardamom yeah I want to put some cardamom in there I just want the seeds cardamom is like very floral fenugreek in fenugreek to me it has a quality of like fake maple syrup to it very like sweet I want this to be pretty fun because I was really not feeling texture from pieces of spices I'm gonna add some turmeric yellow mustard see it as well grind that up chili powder in there so with the addition of chili powder I now have it in our sauce base and our marinade for the chicken next step so I'm doing the rough dice on this onion I'm just blending this mixture of onion and ginger with some water just because I never experienced a distinct piece of any of those things in the sauce so but I believe they're in there flavor-wise [Music] hmm so I guess the question is like in theory I guess I probably could add the tomato to this I guess the other question is like what is making up the liquid in the sauce you know is that water is there possibly like a little bit of buttermilk or something oh man it's [ __ ] chunks in this this is very disappointing I'm gonna start with a couple tablespoons of ghee and get our sauce going here spice blend in our onion mixture the endgame here is that we are cooking out all of these aromatics that is gonna form the flavor base of this sauce this is gonna be cooked down to a jammy paste I'm gonna add some tomato to it then it's gonna chill while we grill off our chicken we're making fun what do you think of it I think I'm making chicken tikka masala okay yeah I guess my thing is like why do I not have the tomato product in there now it's like I'm looking at Brad but I'm thinking about my cousin grew up thinking tomato and he's like [ __ ] skulking around so I'm putting in like a half cup of tomato puree it's gotta be redder than that though right I'm gonna go with a full cup of tomato I know I think I had a little too much water in with that onion which is why it wasn't like cooking out that nicely you know having like a red sauce like I feel like that's key whoo Wow bitter I mean like how is that better if I were trying to fix this dish I would say like I'd use half the amount of onion it's less water and I would fry that out hard before I even dump the spices in there sauce is simmering I have a few thoughts about it we can just move on and start grilling some chicken I'm gonna season it lightly with salt I'm grilling the chicken because I really experienced a decent amount of char on the chicken that I tasted earlier today I really wanted to recreate that that effect by using the grill here yeah there's half a teaspoon of the Kashmiri chilli powder which FL is it's pretty spicy so I didn't use that much of it but maybe you're thinking there should have been more yeah yeah like a lot more yeah okay okay that's good to know oh my god we're falling apart I just sprinkled a little bit extra of this mild chili powder on the chicken okay I'm just doing it for color just because I was looking so stupid right now chickens off the grill I'm just doing like a very rough chop so I'm dumping the chicken in here I mean use a splash of water just to thin this out of touch I just want to heat this back through I feel like it's too thick it just feels like it's like gonna be too textural I mean flavor-wise like I don't hate it but I'm not in love with it at all it'd just be a little bit saucy er this is version one I just like in my mind I'm hearing the time done look it's not what I wanted it's not what anybody wanted this tastes like very jangly to me the original dish was like very pleasantly harmonious and balanced right now stuffs just kind of like sticking out like a sore thumb I'm really not that happy with this at all a little bitter I need more silkiness to this sauce all right I'm wondering if maybe there's a little bit of dairy going into it I'm gonna try a few things tomorrow throw a little buttermilk in it you know stir a little yogurt in it ingredients I would say this is 72% taste I would say 65 that's being a little harsh I'd say I'm at 75 this isn't like coq au van you know what I'm saying like I think we're like we're in the right room technique I want to give myself 85 for technique appearance I look I mean this just looks pretty sad but it's a red sauce with chicken in it look I'll give myself an 88 for appearance the sauce could have a slightly different consistency but overall I think like this is the general gist of the dish so I'm at an 80 overall actually feels a little bit generous this one kind of threw me for a few loops all that means I have one more chance to try this tomorrow morning and a lot is gonna be riding on that I mean its sauce it's just not like super saucy when I smelled it I definitely had that sensation of like okay I'm I definitely need some cinnamon in there in the sauce like I was missing that yesterday there's definitely a distinct tang to the to the chicken you know I still feel really good about the yogurt how the sensation of their just being more marinade clinging to this chicken want to stick with a thicker marinade and I want to keep more of it on the chicken when it goes to the grill the presence of a thin thread of onion would be kind of interesting from a standpoint of maybe changing up how I approach my sauce ah okay I believe I'm finding pieces of onion in here now that's huge so I had a lot of issues with my sauce yesterday and a part of it I think stems from the fact that I'm just not super comfortable with the whole technique of blending the onion with the water to make a puree I like the idea of just cooking down the onion finely sliced before proceeding to add our spices I use mustard seeds yesterday and I don't want to do that today I think that was a mistake I also used fenugreek yesterday which I'm like do I taste it I don't know bitter maple is anything that's gonna add bitterness to this I don't really like you know I've been going back and forth about whether I think there's some sort of dairy being added to it whether it was yogurt buttermilk I think I will take a small amount of my next pass on the sauce and just try adding a couple of those things okay I got a piece of cilantro good we have a bit of an aggressive schedule today so just to get myself fully in the game I am going to be watching the Joe Esposito you're the best around Karate Kid montage this is guaranteed to pump me up under any circumstances never doubt that you're the one and you can have the dream we're gonna get some chicken into some marinade ASAP I think I still want to do garlic and ginger in my chicken marinade no time for any more 80s montages okay however badly we might want to do them yes I'm sticking with yogurt hot chilli powder another teaspoon of our milder chili powder [Music] their karate kid' always helps me this Ralph Macchio in general helps me like what a good dude I love Ralph Macchio man okay feeling good got some color concentration here chicken is going into the marinade let's think about our spices for our sauce I'm gonna take my cardamom out of this I'm just not like tasting it coriander and cumin black pepper or going in a little bit of all you got can never let you down poetry the quarter teaspoon of turmeric again I really want to control bitterness garam masala and then we're gonna put a touch of cinnamon on top of this I'm gonna use some more of my chili blend so today I'm thinly slicing the onion and then I'm also gonna do a couple cloves of smashed garlic I'm sweating out my onion and my garlic then spices and ginger get it going just want to develop the flavor on that a little bit and then tomatoes gonna go in we've got a very different kind of spice profile today it's a little bit warmer color wise I'm not hating it I definitely feel better about the results that I'm getting today I'm gonna keep it rolling over low I'm gonna grill some chicken yesterday I felt like it just didn't have a lot of personality like it needed a little more chili heat and a little more fire I just feel a lot better just already about the chili having kind of abstained that yogurt I think we're good here before we proceed there is this question of is this sauce being finished it's some sort of dairy here's what I'd like to do I want to take a small amount of sauce and I'd like to combine with having cream buttermilk some yogurt this is heavy cream oh wow was never gonna suck was it so buttermilk it's like low-fat milk that's just been cultured a little too sour this is the yogurt but I already just don't like how it's not incorporating into the sauce it adds tang before it adds any additional richness from all of these I'm kind of leaning on maybe just the tiniest bit of heavy cream and also a little bit of water so this is asafoetida Priya refers to this ingredient as the ingredient that makes all of our Indian food actually tastes India it has like interesting kind of sour a little bit of like umami and kind of like kick to it I don't know it's kind of just like a finishing little ajuna say quoi and I'm gonna say quiet okay so I'm just cutting up the chicken and I'm just gonna finish it in the sauce and just kind of cook everything together for a few minutes I'm feeling pretty good another cilantro okay so this is the second version of the dish I've got here honestly I almost wish I could just be serving this to Priya right now I'm feeling really good about what my techniques and ingredients added up to here so I don't really see a need to kind of change all that much I want to pull back the chili heat a little bit but I'm really liking the color I feel good about having sweated out pull onion just from the standpoint of like getting this you know this is what I was tasting in the original dish and I think the addition of the heavy cream I'm gonna hedge my bets and say that I that it's there in the original dish maybe not a lot of it but I feel like it's part of what's building up that richness in the dish and it's also what's helping balance that tomato ingredients I'm gonna give myself an 86% taste I'm coming in hot at 91 technique 88 appearance 95 [Music] sorry Jeremy all that adds up to a 90 I've got one more shot to do this before I have to serve something to Priya I'm gonna make a couple tweaks but probably not a whole lot of changes here so we've come right up next best and last chance I'm gonna start by making the marinade for the chicken moving on to our spiced base for our sauce and then we talked about just going down slightly in chili powder I'll do a teaspoon of the mild one still let's go down to 3/4 on the hash Marion chili powder so that's our spices sticking with thin slices of whole onion the graphics over my left shoulder there there could be oil in this instead of ghee but mangey like you can't beat it for flavor onions are jammy spice mix goes in ginger went in time to grill that chicken chicken not taking off like any of the marinade in fact I kind of want to like keep a good little bit of it on I'm liking the color we're getting overall I'm gonna add a splash of water so I definitely did that with the last one of them into my splash of cream as well yeah with that I'm liking a look I'm liking the consistency how you doing Sola great cool I almost forgot our pinch the secret weapon okay nobody touch the rest of this this is dinner tonight I will mess you up cuts of cilantro this is as they say the one I really hope I didn't screw it up I'm just kind of dying to know who it is to me this has always felt like an authentic dish it tastes pretty awesome to me but we'll see how it is side by side so how are you feeling I feel like okay who do you think made this dish and what do you think the dish is I have maintained from the beginning that I think it's chicken tikka masala and I have maintained from the beginning also that I'm not really sure who made the dish my best guess based on kind of like video presence in the world is huh hi welcome I don't know we're gonna find out oh my gosh it's really an honor to have you on the show well thank you thank ya this is like the first time maybe I ever know wow no okay look similar Oh yours is definitely a little bit looser yes and the pieces of chicken are bigger so we're gonna taste the original original first so now let's try Chris's your chicken textures better did you hear that did we all hear that very close very close so I'm dying to know what spices you have in your self did you use yogurt I used yogurt in the marinade for the chicken and I used cream and my sauce marinade after you put the spices in it's an old curry sauce technique you keep putting in a tablespoon of yogurt you blend it in until it disappears it helps thicken the sauce and gives it a little bit of sourness yeah we can probably give it a little bit of sweetness too because yeah it caramelize it gives it a nice texture Indian yeah oh and I put a pinch of asafoetida in it does yourself even know it was meant for vegetables and beans that were hard to digest that was this purpose initially gotcha because it's a digestive but alright well and are you using is your initial cooking fat that you're sweating your onions in is that ghee I used oil olive oil would you use heat please key so the chicken I called it for a yogurt marinade garlic and ginger a blend of chili powders did you put lemon I do not look lemon okay so there are two Mariners I remember once James Beard came to our house for dinner and I waited he took one bite of the tandoori chicken and he said to Mara nods he could taste it right through so the first is lemon juice and salt you leave it for 20 minutes okay and the second is your mixture of onion garlic ginger and you can put yogurt in the second one if you like and you can put cream in the second marker but that's all right but I could tell from the texture of like one of their other I like your chicken I like the texture of your chicken better than this so whatever you did do it yeah okay cool how did you actually cook it so I grilled it because I felt like that was the best way to get those kinds of little toasty nubbins yeah yeah why is this being done in a skillet no no no I grill it and I put it on a sort of flap and askew us that's so fascinating that you actually take the time to skewer it your chicken turned out for you but yours tastes wonderful okay I really like the texture of yours it's very nice thank you you did a great job Oh honestly this is yeah okay so now is the part yeah I'm a little nervous about we're gonna win a judge Chris [ __ ] it what's the first degree ingredients you're in great score for you're choosing ingredients correctly is 90 that's wonderful yeah they're nearly all there oh my god I'm not gonna be on a roll I'm not gonna be able to stop smiling so I'm not gonna fight it next cut erase taste I think the taste of mine is slightly better okay but the texture of your chicken is better than this okay 87 yeah okay okay it's still in the game technique I thought they were very yeah I think that might be you know that was a big shining moment for crass like a 95 yeah 95 technique and an appearance I think also very both very well he's pretty good they look very appetizing so we give 1990 94 hearing okay this might be like the best score I've ever gotten I'm freaking out what scores have you gotten on other ones I don't know only Dan would remember all I remember that is the pain and the misery sweat okay your final score is 92 good I'm honestly I'm thrilled 92% is amazing it was very good you could easily sell this on the streets of London it may come to that I'm just so gets cancelled I am you know honestly still a little bit speechless I cannot thank you enough for coming here you did fantastic thank you awesome I'm speechless they got me good on this one call it the power of Joe Esposito call it the the power of Ralph Macchio or the fact that I wore my lucky socks today to have done as well as I did was really it's just like a bright spot you know this is this is huge and honestly we'll never forget it it was pretty pretty incredible for me what are you doing by the way are you sure you have enough onion though yeah exactly are you sure you have enough onion but yeah I'm so distracted by the ungodly amount of onion and that skillet I can't really think about anything at all and how much sumac is in there I know that's great okay yeah yeah we're not under delivering

Channel: Bon Appétit

Views: 2,659,984

Rating: 4.9594965 out of 5

Keywords: chicken tikka masala, chris, cooking challenge, chris morocco, chris makes, reverse engineering, chris bon appetit, chris reverse engineering, chris test kitchen, blind cooking, blindfood cooking, blindfold cooking challenge, taste testing, tikka masala, chicken tikka masala recipe, chris makes chicken tikka masala, chicken tikka masala bon appetit, madhur jaffrey, madhur jaffrey tikka masala, how to tikka masala, tikka masasa recipe, tikka, masala, food, bon appetit

Id: Vsb0g1XUpCQ

Length: 30min 40sec (1840 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 20 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/BigMax55]

I agree. Sohla IS the best

[u/steveofthejungle]

Chris: "Yeah sure just try to be quiet"

Brad: "Ok that's gonna be hard as fuck"

Chris: "Yeah no kidding"

[u/Lokaji]

I love how she compliments him on his chicken having a better texture. He can ride that high forever.

[u/CTRL_ALT_PWN]

Sohla is that character in video games you run into every once in a while for tips and power-ups.

[u/therealavasectomy]

Ugh Sohla ❤️ finally someone who understands what an appropriate amount of onions is. But seriously seeing that skillet overflowing with sumac and onions was hysterical. Is that one of Brad’s recipes?

[u/ddaved76]

Chris's pure joy at the end (a joy rarely displayed so brightly by him) was wonderful. Great ep!!!

[u/AGRooster]

Love the James Beard name drop at the end. Wow.

[u/horseradisher]

It really can't be overstated how good Chris is at these.

[u/jamlarso]

A bit of an aside, but it struck me in this video that the it’s nice to have 1 World Trade Center represented as a casual, regular work location full of real people in popular culture. As a New Yorker I felt it when they left the store and they did a little zoom in on the building in the distance, as if to casually say, “oh, I can see my house from here.”