Chicken Tikka Masala | Chetna Makan

Hi Food Tubers, I'm Chetna and welcome to my kitchen today. I've decided to show you one of the most popular takeaway dishes which is Chicken Tikka Masala. This is one of my favourite dishes because the chicken is packed with flavours of ginger, garlic and then it's served in this beautifully creamy tomatoey sauce and then it's topped with some onions, green peppers, coriander. So all in all, it's a complete winner. So I'm going to start by marinating the chicken because it needs to sit in the marinade for a few hours. So I'm going to start with 150 grams of natural yogurt and to this I'm going to add some spices. So I have got half a teaspoon of turmeric powder, one teaspoon of Kashmiri chilli powder and half a teaspoon of garam masala. And then I've got one teaspoon of salt that goes in. Four cloves of garlic and a small piece of ginger and I'm going to grate it into the marinade. So I've got all the ingredients of the marinade in this bowl and I'll give it a good mix. And the last thing to add is one tablespoon of mustard oil. I've got the marinade ready for the chicken and I've got 800 grams of boneless chicken breasts which I'm going to chop and add to the marinade. Now make sure you coat every single piece with this marinade because that's so important because the marinade is what gives the chicken this amazing flavour. Now the chicken needs to sit in this marinade for a minimum of two hours to get the right flavours but if you can leave it overnight, even better. So this will go in the fridge now. I have got 50 grams of cashew nuts and I'm going to soak it in 50 ml of milk. This is going to soak for as long as your chicken's marinating and we're going to use it in our sauce a bit later. The chicken's been sitting in this beautiful marinade for two hours and now it's ready to be cooked. So I've got the oven preheated for 200 degrees. Now I've got this roasting dish and I'm just going to put a tablespoon of vegetable oil and just spread it evenly and then we're going to put the chicken in this. So this chicken is going to go in the oven for 20-25 minutes and you just want to make sure it's cooking evenly because you just want a nice golden colour and don't want to burn it. While the chicken's cooking, we're going to get started with our sauce. I've got some vegetable oil here and I've got one teaspoon of cumin seeds. So I've got some whole spices, a few bay leaves, a black cardamom, a few green cardamoms, cloves and cinnamon or kasia and we're going to put this in the oil with the cumin. So I'm going to roughly chop two medium sized onions. I will also add a couple of green chillies and this will now go in the oil. The onions now cook for five to seven minutes on medium to low heat because we want them to be really nice and deep golden brown. While that's cooking, I'm going to prepare the ginger and garlic. I've got three cloves of garlic and a small piece of ginger and I'm going to finely grate this and let it cook for a minute. So I've got five tomatoes which I'm going to roughly chop. I've covered it up and now this is going to cook for 10-15 minutes on medium to low heat so that all the tomatoes are properly cooked and we can get a nice thick sauce. I'm going to add four tablespoons of tomato puree to this. The tomato puree really adds to the thickness of the sauce and also makes it a bit more tomatoey. I'm going to take the stalks of the coriander and add it to the sauce right now. The stalks of coriander have got so much more flavour than the leaves that really shouldn't waste it and just add it to the sauce. We'll cover it up again and give it another 10 minutes. Oh, look at that. That smells beautiful. I've got one teaspoon of coriander powder, one teaspoon of Kashmiri chilli powder, a teaspoon of garam masala and half a teaspoon of turmeric powder. So all of this goes in and a good mix. It's turned into this really deep colour which is beautiful. So spices are mixed in and our chicken is ready to come out which is going to go straight into this sauce. We're going to mix it really nicely so everything comes together. We'll now grind the cashew nuts which have been soaking in the milk for a few hours now. Now the cashew nut puree just adds richness to the sauce and if you are allergic to nuts you can skip the cashew nut puree but just add a bit more of the cream which we'll add it in a second. And don't forget if you need a bit more water at any stage, just feel free to add that. We'll take a small onion and we'll just cut it in half and then just make squares to add to our cooked curry and then again take a green pepper and make squares of these two. We're just adding it for extra crunch and flavour in the ends and then the peppers go in as well. Roughly 50ml or so of the double cream. So our chicken tikka masala is ready and it's such an amazing dish to share it with family and friends for special occasions, festivals, Diwali. I've got onion salad, yoghurt, some homemade chapati and some steaming rice so I'm going to give this a go. Oh, I can't wait to try this. It smells amazing. That is so good. Thank you so much for joining me today. If you've liked this recipe, then you can find more on my channel, Food with Chetna. So please do subscribe and I'll see you there.