Tandoori chicken recipe

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A great British favourite, this Indian tandoori chicken is very tasty and spicy and easy to cook. Serve it up with a yogurt dip and your favourite kind of naan bread.

Tandoori chicken
  • healthy
Serves4
SkillEasy
Preparation Time25 mins
Cooking Time40 mins
Total Time1 hours 5 mins
Cost RangeCheap
Nutrition Per PortionRDA
Calories463 Kcal23%
Fat21 g30%
Saturated Fat8 g40%

This tender and aromatic tandoori chicken recipe is so easy to do and is ready in just over an hour.

Like all great Indian dishes, this recipe is a British favourite. Combining tender meat with delicately balanced spice mixed baked in a yoghurt marinade. A tandoor is actually a traditional kind of clay oven, but you don't need one here. We've simply roasted the chicken in the oven. You can serve this chicken with almost anything - even a roast dinner. But we like it best with a creamy yoghurt dip like this cucumber raita, and some naan bread.

Ingredients

  • 4 large part-boned chicken breasts
  • Salt and freshly ground black pepper
  • Juice of 1 lemon
  • 4 cloves garlic, peeled and crushed
  • 7.5cm (3in) piece fresh ginger, peeled and grated
  • 1 tbsp paprika
  • 2 tbsp garam masala
  • 3 tbsp sunflower oil
  • 250ml (8fl oz) plain yogurt

For the raita:

  • 200ml (7fl oz) plain yogurt
  • ¼ cucumber, chopped
  • 1 tbs chopped fresh mint leaves

To serve:

  • 8 mini Peshwari naan breads (we used Sharwood’s), toasted
  • 1 lemon, cut into wedges

WEIGHT CONVERTER

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Method

  1. Cut a few deep slashes in the chicken and season generously. Put into a shallow, non-metallic dish.
  2. Put the lemon juice, garlic, ginger, paprika, garam masala, oil and yogurt into a food processor and blend to make a smooth paste.
  3. Spread the paste over the chicken and leave to marinate for a couple of hours, to allow flavours to penetrate.
  4. Set the oven to 200°C/400ºF/Gas 6. Roast the tandoori chicken for 40 mins until golden and the juices run clear.
  5. To make the raita: Mix together the yogurt, cucumber, mint leaves and seasoning. Serve chicken with the raita and lemon wedges, and toasted naan bread, if liked.

Top tip for making tandoori chicken

If you want it as pink as those served in the Indian restaurants, add red food colouring to the yogurt paste.

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Octavia Lillywhite
Food and Lifestyle Writer

Octavia Lillywhite is an award-winning food and lifestyle journalist with over 15 years of experience. With a passion for creating beautiful, tasty family meals that don’t use hundreds of ingredients or anything you have to source from obscure websites, she’s a champion of local and seasonal foods, using up leftovers and composting, which, she maintains, is probably the most important thing we all can do to protect the environment.