Sharing a pretty easy and traditional Indian recipe – Tandoori Chicken without oven. Deliciously spiced and pan cooked authentic Tandoori Chicken recipe. Secret lies in the marination – the longer the marinade the more flavorful and moist the chicken will turn out to be. Both the cooking methods are shown below – without oven and with oven. I marinated the chicken for 12 hours and it was PERFECT. It’s the yogurt that makes this chicken so moist and homemade tandoori masala is what makes this dish spicy and flavorful! If you really want spicy, kick up the garam masala quantity. While cooking on the cooktop – marination will turn all liquidy as curd will curdle and become lumpy. Don’t worry keep going and if you have leftover marination add that too; to the pan/kadhai. Once all cooked and dried up it will look all smeared and coated in the masala. End result- chicken came out juicy and bursting with flavor (see picture below).
But for true tandoori flavor, grill it over a tandoor and that would be so much better. Cooking in the oven gives full flavor to the chicken. Keep turning and basting with butter as you grill. Use a higher oven temp to get the crispy outside texture. Oven – cooked chicken flavors are subtle but come through nicely when cooked. See the picture below to compare both the cooking methods. Both the methods had same cook time – 24 minutes. In both methods, chicken was juicy and tender. Only difference is the appearance – chicken cooked over cooktop was all smeared and coated in masala as compared to the other one where marination had all dried up during grilling but had so much flavor and the chicken was unbelievably moist! Serve with fresh lemon wedges over the chicken along with chutney and onion rings.
