First, a word on this dish
You cut boneless chicken into bite-sized cubes, marinate it twice, and cook it over very high heat until the outside blisters and chars lightly and the inside stays juicy. That is chicken tikka, the dish that introduced tandoori cooking to much of the world beyond India. Of all the restaurant favourites, it is one of the few you can truly reproduce at home, since the two things it needs, a well-built marinade and strong heat from above, do not require a clay tandoor. The two-stage marinade makes a real difference. The first coat of ginger, garlic, lemon and salt seasons the meat from the inside, and the second, thicker coat of yogurt and spices is what actually chars and sticks once it meets the heat. People who use only one marinade often wonder why their tikka tastes flat next to a good roadside or restaurant one, and this is the main reason.
The story behind the dish
The honest answer to "where did chicken tikka come from?" is that people still argue about it, and naming a single place would be misleading. The earliest solid trail leads to the Northwest Frontier, around what is now Peshawar in Pakistan, where the tandoor and the habit of marinating meat in yogurt and spices before searing it were already established. Punjabi refugee cooks then moved this style of cooking into Delhi and Punjab after Partition in 1947, and Delhi's Moti Mahal is the restaurant that comes up most often. Colleen Taylor Sen and Lizzie Collingham each describe tandoori chicken and chicken tikka as part of this Punjab and Peshawar continuum, not as one person's invention. In that light, the tikka sold in Delhi and Punjab now is an older frontier tradition that was reworked and popularised after 1947. Chicken tikka masala, the saucy dish made from grilled tikka, belongs to a separate story that is equally contested and is set among South Asian restaurants in Britain. It is not the dish we are making here.
The method, in order
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Prep
Coat the chicken in the first marinade
Put the chicken cubes in a bowl and mix in the ginger-garlic paste, lemon juice and salt until nothing is left uncoated. Cover, and leave in the fridge for 20 minutes or more while you put together the second marinade. This light first coat goes into the meat and seasons it throughout, a job the thick yogurt layer cannot do by itself.
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Prep
Stir together and add the second marinade
Next, beat the yogurt until it flows smoothly, and stir in the chilli powder, garam masala, cumin, coriander, turmeric, kasuri methi (crumbled), oil and salt. Pour the paste over the chicken and massage it in until every cube is covered. The oil earns its place: it holds the spices to the surface so they brown over the flame, whereas an oil-free marinade dries out and drops off.
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Prep
Chill the chicken while it marinates
Put the bowl back in the fridge for a minimum of 4 hours. If you can leave it overnight, up to 24 hours, the flavour goes deeper and the meat becomes softer. Never marinate on the counter. Chicken sitting at room temperature spends time in the range where bacteria multiply fastest, and spice or acid in a marinade does not undo that.
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Prep
Skewer the pieces
Take the chicken out of the fridge and push the pieces onto skewers, leaving a small gap between neighbours so heat can reach the sides and not only the top. If you use bamboo skewers, soak them for at least 30 minutes first, or the exposed ends scorch and snap as you grill.
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Cook
Sear over strong direct heat
Get your grill, grill pan or broiler as hot as it will go before any chicken touches it. Tikka needs speed and fierce heat, and a gentle approach will fail. Lay the skewers on the surface and leave them for 3 to 4 minutes per side, until the edges blacken in spots. Browning alone is not enough. Indoors, the oven broiler on its highest setting with the shelf near the element is a workable stand-in for a grill.
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Cook
Brush with fat and finish cooking
Rotate the skewers every few minutes, brushing on a little melted butter or oil each time, until the chicken is charred in places on every side and cooked through. That takes roughly 12 to 15 minutes, depending on your heat. Test the thickest piece with a thermometer, which should show at least 74°C (165°F). Thigh meat stays moist at that temperature in a way breast does not, which is why thighs are used.
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Serve
Rest briefly, then serve
Rest the skewers off the heat for 2 to 3 minutes before easing the chicken from them. Add chaat masala and a squeeze of lemon, and serve with the onions tossed in vinegar. The char softens as tikka cools, and with it much of the appeal, so carry it to the table straight from the grill.
Ingredient stand-ins
Breast meat can stand in for thigh, though it dries out sooner when cooked this hot. Remove it a couple of minutes early and check the temperature more often. Greek yogurt goes in for ordinary thick yogurt with no change to the quantity. If you do not have Kashmiri chilli powder, mix half the amount of a stronger chilli powder with some paprika, because Kashmiri chilli is used for its deep colour and gentle heat, not for punch. Charcoal gives the smokiest taste. Without outdoor space, a very hot cast-iron grill pan finished under a broiler produces a close match.
Making it milder or fiercer
The chilli powder in the second marinade supplies the heat, and you can raise or lower it without changing how the chicken chars, because the char comes from the high heat and from sugars in the marinade, not from chilli. To tone it down, use only Kashmiri chilli powder, which is mild, and add no other red chilli. To strengthen it, stir in a teaspoon of a hotter ground chilli or a pinch of cayenne next to the Kashmiri, which holds the red colour while adding fire. If you overdo it, a dusting of extra chaat masala once the chicken is off the grill brightens the flavour without adding true heat.
The slip most cooks make
Too short a marinade is the commonest slip. After 20 or 30 minutes, the spices and acid have not reached the middle of the meat, and you taste spiced chicken, not tikka. Give it at least 4 hours, and overnight if you can. Next comes heat that is not strong enough, which steams the chicken grey instead of charring it, because tikka depends on fierce direct heat for a short time. Then there is the missing oil, which lets the coating dry and fall off instead of holding as a crust. Finally, cubes of mixed sizes cook unevenly, with small ones turning dry before large ones are done. Cut them to a steady 1.5 inches.
Storing what is left
Fridge or counter: Marinated raw chicken can wait in the fridge, covered, for up to 24 hours before cooking. Longer than that, the acid starts to break the meat down in an unpleasant way. Cooked chicken tikka keeps for up to 3 days in an airtight container in the fridge. It does not freeze especially well once cooked, since the char and texture suffer when it thaws, although you can freeze it for up to 2 months if you need to.
Bringing it back to life: To warm tikka back up, use a hot dry pan or the broiler and give it a few minutes a side, which restores a bit of char. A microwave makes the meat rubbery and kills the smoky edge. If you must use one, cover the chicken loosely, heat in short bursts, then slip it under the broiler to crisp the outside again. In every case, serve it only once it is steaming hot through the middle.
Handle with care
Raw chicken calls for care beyond ordinary kitchen cleanliness. Marinate it in the fridge, never on the counter, even for a short while. Keep one board and knife for raw chicken only, and wash your hands, utensils and each surface it or its marinade touched in hot, soapy water before anything else comes near. Do not spoon leftover raw marinade over the cooked chicken or use it as a sauce unless you have boiled it hard for a full minute, since it has been in contact with raw poultry the entire time. Judge doneness with a thermometer in the thickest part of the largest piece and not by colour, looking for at least 74°C (165°F), and chill leftovers within two hours of cooking.
Sources worth opening
- 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.