Tandoori Chicken (or Chicken Tikka)

One of the Penzey mixes we have is Tandoori seasoning, so we thawed two boneless/skinless chicken breasts (well, one "breast" i guess... is it one or two?) and then mixed 1 cup of plain yogurt with the juice of a lemon and many, MANY shakes of tandoori seasoning. We cut the chicken breast(s) into big chunks and put the chunks into the bowl and made sure they were covered well with the tandoori-yogurt mixture. And into the fridge for the whole day long, they went...

We researched Tandoori Chicken and found that it is traditionally cooked in a hot earthen oven (i.e. tandoor) on skewers without searing or anything like that. We also found that - since we were using boneless chunks - we were actually making Chicken Tikka. Tikka, tandoori - it's all good. Next time, we'll make it with bone-full chicken.

So, trying to keep with that tradition, we decided to skewer our chicken and cook them in a hot (400-degree) oven. So we skewered the chunks and suspended them over a baking dish, thusly:


Along with the chicken, we prepared Curried Vegetables by chopping up a green pepper, a medium onion, and a few mushrooms into ~1" chunks. We also added some chopped tomato and some olive oil. Then we stirred in several healthy shakes of curry powder, some salt and some Cajun seasoning. That went in the 400-degree oven first, and 15 minutes later the chicken went in. 45 minutes total time later, everything came back out and was ready to be plated!



Also with that, we made some 10-minute brown rice, adding in a little butter and a few shakes of the tandoori seasoning in there, as well.

Came out really good! The tandoori seasoning isn't "hot" by any means, but it is nice and subtle. Next time, we'll probably just throw the chicken on the grill to add some more flavor. The VEGGIES came out ridiculously delicious - we'll try many more combinations like that. Overall, a pretty good first attempt at Indian cooking.