Text 14675, 109 rader
Skriven 2011-08-14 17:04:00 av JIM WELLER (1:123/140)
Ärende: Tandoori 1
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     Title: The Food Lab: Tandoori Chicken Pt 1
Categories: Indian, Chicken, Grill, info
  Servings: 4

           Tandoori Chicken

There are a few things in life that everyone should experience.
First and foremost is rolling in snow then jumping in a hot tub.
It'll alter your life, or at the very least your circulation. But
coming in a close second is watching a skilled Indian tandoor cook
do his magic. There are few things more awesome than seeing bright
red hunks of raw marinated chicken threaded onto massive four-foot
long metal skewers, seeing those skewers lowered down into the fiery
inferno of a 900 F clay tandoor oven, then emerging 15 minutes later
charred, smoky, tender, and juicy.

Tandoor ovens, those are the large, bell-shaped coal or wood-fired
ovens used in traditional Indian baking, were traditionally used only
for making Naan. It wasn't until the early 20th century that an
enterprising Punjabi restaurateur named Kundan Lal Gujral created
culinary history by saying to himself, "hey, I wonder what happens
when I stick a chicken in there?"

The dish would eventually go on to spawn the now equally-famous
Chicken Tikka, which would in turn beget the British classic Chicken
Tikka Masala (essentially hunks of tandoori chicken cut up and
served with a spiced tomato-cream sauce).

At its best, it's incomparably juicy, mildly spiced, with an intense
hit of smoke. Served simply with sliced onions and a squeeze of
lemon or lime, it's good, honest, simple cooking. But more often
than not, you end up with dry, stringy breast meat reheated in the
oven, chicken so dry that even the sizzle platter it's served on
can't save it.

My goal this week: figure out how to make this Indian classic in my
own backyard.

The Basics:

Chicken Prep

For reasons that should be readily obvious to anyone, we're not
going to be making our chicken in a tandoor oven. Luckily, a
backyard charcoal grill will do just fine (yeah, you can go with
gas, although it won't get quite hot enough for what we're after).

With a traditional tandoor oven, the chicken gets cut into halves or
quarters before being stuck onto skewers. On a grill, it's much
easier to butterfly them. They stay flat, they're easy to flip, and
the cook more evenly.

The easiest way to butterfly a chicken is to cut out its back with a
pair of kitchen shears (see our recommendation here). A few snips
through the ribs, a quick push down on the breast to flatten it and
break the wishbone, and you're done.

Tandoori chicken is traditionally cooked with the skin off. While
for most methods of cooking chicken this would be a bad idea (skin
is an insulator that prevents dry breast meat from becoming tough or
stringy), with tandoori chicken, the thick yogurt-based marinade
helps to prevent the meat from drying out.

The easiest way to get your chicken ready for the grill is to twist
the legs up so that they're pointing upwards in the same direction
of the breasts, then to make sure everything stays flat and
flippable by keeping everything in place with a couple of metal
skewers (wooden ones will work, but don't expect them not to burn in
the high heat needed for this type of cooking).

Once you get the chicken skewered, it's time for the marinade...

Do Marinades Really Work? Of the various restaurants I've visited
and recipes I've perused, there are only a few very minor variations
in the cooking technique, and all of them start with a yogurt and
citrus juice-based marinade seasoned with garlic, ginger, a few
spices, and a bit of red food coloring. This last ingredient is one
that many restaurants actually seem embarrassed to admit to using.

you'll see the telltale jug of red food coloring sitting right there
on the spice rack. I'll hear chefs say, "oh, the color comes from
the cayenne pepper," but take a glance around, and you'll see the
telltale jug of red food coloring sitting right there on the spice
rack.

Simple fact: if you want your tandoori chicken to be the deep red
shade you find at Indian restaurants, food coloring is the way to do
it. I use powdered achiote, just because I have it on hand and it
somehow feels more "natural" to me, but there ain't nothing wrong
with a bit of the red dye #2.

:Posted by J. Kenji Lopez-Alt

  From: Serious Eats                    
 
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Cheers

YK Jim


... A rotisserie is a really morbid Ferris wheel for chickens

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