Before You Start
Cut boneless chicken into chunks, marinate it twice, and cook it over fierce heat, and you get chicken tikka: blistered and lightly blackened on the surface, juicy within. For many people outside India, this was their introduction to tandoori cooking. It is also one of the few restaurant favorites that travels well into a home kitchen, since the two things it needs, a good marinade and strong heat from above or beside the meat, do not depend on owning a clay tandoor. The two marinades are the part people are tempted to skip. A first, thin round of ginger, garlic, lemon and salt seasons the meat from within, and a second, thicker coating of yogurt and spices is what clings and chars once the skewers hit the heat. Cooks who use only one marinade often find their tikka tastes flat next to a good roadside or restaurant version, and that is usually why.
Where This Dish Comes From
Where chicken tikka comes from is genuinely disputed, and it is better to say so than to hand the credit to one place. The tandoor, along with the practice of marinating meat in yogurt and spices before cooking it quickly over high heat, is recorded in the Northwest Frontier region, which includes the area around Peshawar in present-day Pakistan. Tandoori cooking reached Delhi and Punjab with Punjabi refugee cooks after Partition in 1947, and it is most often linked with restaurants such as Moti Mahal in Delhi. Colleen Taylor Sen and Lizzie Collingham, both food historians, trace tandoori chicken and chicken tikka to this Punjab and Peshawar continuum instead of to a single inventor or city. Seen that way, the tikka eaten today in Delhi and Punjab continues a Northwest Frontier tradition that was reshaped and made popular after 1947, and it is not a wholly separate Indian invention. Chicken tikka masala, the gravy dish made with grilled tikka pieces, has a different and equally argued history centered on South Asian restaurants in Britain, and it is not what this recipe makes.
Step by Step
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Prep
Start with the thin marinade
Put the cubed chicken in a bowl with the ginger-garlic paste, lemon juice and salt and turn it until every piece is covered. Cover the bowl and chill it for at least 20 minutes while you make the second marinade. This thin first coating soaks into the meat and seasons it from the inside, which a single thick coat of yogurt cannot manage by itself.
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Prep
Mix the yogurt marinade and work it in
Whisk the yogurt until it is entirely smooth, then add the chilli powder, garam masala, cumin, coriander, turmeric, kasuri methi, oil and salt. Pour it over the chicken and massage it in with your hands so that each piece is fully coated. Do not leave out the oil. It helps the spices stick to the meat and char on the grill, rather than drying out and flaking away.
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Prep
Chill the chicken while it marinates
Cover the bowl and keep it in the refrigerator for at least 4 hours. Leaving it overnight, up to 24 hours, gives deeper flavor and more tender meat. Marinate chicken only in the refrigerator and never on the counter. Raw poultry that stays out sits in the temperature range where bacteria multiply fastest, and no quantity of spice or acid makes that safe.
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Prep
Skewer the pieces
Take the chicken out of the refrigerator and push the pieces onto skewers, leaving a little gap between neighbors so that heat reaches the sides as well as the top and chars them too. Bamboo skewers need a soak of at least 30 minutes beforehand, or the exposed ends scorch and snap on the grill.
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Cook
Sear hard over direct heat
Heat a grill, grill pan or broiler until it is truly hot, because this dish relies on speed and intensity, not slow cooking. Lay the skewers down and leave them alone for 3 to 4 minutes on each side, until the edges show real charring and not just browning. If you are cooking indoors, an oven broiler on its highest setting, with the rack close to the element, stands in reasonably well for a grill.
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Cook
Turn, baste and check the temperature
Rotate the skewers every few minutes and brush them lightly with melted butter or oil each time. Keep going until the chicken is charred in spots on all sides and cooked through, which takes roughly 12 to 15 minutes depending on your heat. Push a thermometer into the thickest piece to confirm it reads at least 74°C (165°F). Thighs stay juicier than breast at that temperature, and that is the reason they are used here.
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Serve
Rest briefly, then serve
Take the skewers off the heat and wait 2 to 3 minutes before you slide the chicken off. Dust with chaat masala, squeeze lemon over the top and bring it to the table with the vinegar-tossed onions. Tikka loses its charm quickly as it cools and the char softens, so serve it straight from the grill instead of holding it.
Swaps That Work
You can use boneless chicken breast in place of thighs, though it dries out faster under tandoor-style heat. Take it off a couple of minutes early and check the temperature more often. Greek yogurt can stand in for regular thick yogurt without any change. If you do not have Kashmiri chilli powder, use half as much of a hotter chilli powder and add a little paprika for color, because Kashmiri chilli is prized for its deep red and mild heat and not for strength. A charcoal grill gives the smokiest flavor. Without outdoor space, a hot cast-iron grill pan finished under a hot broiler gets you very close.
Turning the Heat Up or Down
Heat in this dish lives in the chilli powder of the second marinade, and you can turn it up or down freely without hurting the charring, since blackened edges come from fierce heat and the sugars in the marinade, not from the chilli. If you want it gentler, stick to Kashmiri chilli powder alone, which is mild, and leave out any other red chilli. If you want more kick, stir a teaspoon of a hotter, finely ground chilli powder or a pinch of cayenne in next to the Kashmiri; the red color stays and the heat climbs. Should you overshoot, extra chaat masala dusted on after grilling brings brightness without adding much heat.
Where Cooks Often Slip
Marinating for too short a time is the most frequent error. Twenty or thirty minutes is not enough for the spices and acid to work into the chicken, and you end up with spiced chicken instead of tikka, so allow at least 4 hours and, if you can, overnight. Next comes cooking over heat that is not hot enough, which leaves the meat gray and boiled-looking with no char; tikka needs strong, direct heat applied fast. Leaving the oil out of the marinade is another problem, since the spice coating then dries and drops off on the grill instead of forming a crust that holds. Finally, uneven cubes mean some pieces are overdone and dry by the time bigger ones reach a safe temperature, so cut them into uniform 1.5-inch cubes.
Keeping and Warming Up Leftovers
To keep it: Chicken sitting in its marinade should stay covered in the refrigerator and be cooked within 24 hours at the latest, because past that point the acid starts to ruin the texture of the meat. Once cooked, put the tikka in an airtight container in the refrigerator, where it holds for up to 3 days. It does not freeze especially well, as the char and texture suffer when thawed, although freezing it for up to 2 months is safe if you need to.
To warm it up: To warm chicken tikka, use a hot dry pan or a hot broiler for a few minutes on each side, which revives some of the char. A microwave makes the meat rubbery and removes the smoky edge entirely. If you do use one for convenience, cover the chicken loosely and heat it in short bursts, then put it under the broiler briefly if you want the outside to crisp again. Whatever method you choose, heat cooked chicken until it is steaming hot throughout before serving.
Kitchen Safety Note
Handling raw poultry asks for a little more care than ordinary tidiness. Let the chicken marinate in the refrigerator only, never on the counter and not even briefly. Give raw chicken its own cutting board and knife, and wash your hands, your tools and every surface the chicken or its marinade has touched in hot soapy water before anything else comes near them. Whatever marinade is left in the bowl should not become a sauce or drizzle unless you boil it hard for at least a minute first, because it has sat against raw poultry all along. Cook the chicken to an internal temperature of at least 74°C (165°F), measured with a thermometer at the thickest part of the biggest piece instead of guessed from color, and refrigerate leftovers within two hours of cooking.
References and More to Read
- Colleen Taylor Sen, "Feasts and Fasts: A History of Food in India" (Reaktion Books) — on the Northwest Frontier origins of tandoori cooking and its spread into Punjab and Delhi after 1947.
- Lizzie Collingham, "Curry: A Tale of Cooks and Conquerors" (Oxford University Press) — on the Peshawar-to-Delhi history of the tandoor and the restaurants that popularized tandoori chicken and tikka.