Chicken Tikka Masala

Name: Chicken Tikka Masala
Total time: 3 h
Yield: Serves 4
Cuisine: The New British Table
Ingredients: 800 g boneless chicken thigh, cut into chunks; 200 g natural yoghurt; 2 tbsp lemon juice; 2 tsp ground cumin; 2 tsp ground coriander; 1 tsp ground turmeric; 1 tbsp garam masala; 3 garlic cloves, crushed; 1 tbsp grated ginger; 500 ml base gravy (onion, garlic, ginger and tomato, cooked down and blended smooth); 100 ml double cream; 2 tbsp tomato purée; 1 tsp Kashmiri chilli powder; as needed vegetable oil; to taste salt; a small handful fresh coriander, to finish

Britain

Chicken tikka masala, charred chicken in a British-invented tomato and cream curry: deep orange red charred chicken pieces submerged in a thick, glossy, burnt orange sauce flecked with dark char marks, in a round black cast iron pan.

Illustration

Time: 3 hours

Researched: 4 sources cited

Treat the contested origin as it is treated above: several kitchens plausibly arrived at something like this dish independently once tandoor ovens reached British Indian restaurants from 1968, and the popular tomato-soup embellishment is admitted invention, not history.

by Britain

What is fully documented is what the dish was made to mean. On 19 April 2001, Robin Cook, then Foreign Secretary, told the Social Market Foundation: "Chicken tikka masala is now a true British national dish, not only because it is the most popular, but because it is a perfect illustration of the way Britain absorbs and adapts external influences. Chicken tikka is an Indian dish. The masala sauce was added to satisfy the desire of British people to have their meat served in gravy." He used the dish deliberately, to argue for a civic rather than ethnic idea of Britishness. The speech was not universally welcomed at the time. Iqbal Wahhab himself questioned whether curry houses represent genuine multiculturalism or simply reflect British assumptions about India dressed in minarets and pub-style banquette seating, and some Indian chefs objected to a framing that treated the dish as something white Britain had appropriated rather than something genuinely, jointly made. A 2009 campaign by Glasgow MP Mohammad Sarwar to have the dish formally recognised, by Parliament and separately by the EU, as a Glasgow invention went nowhere on both counts, "precisely because," as more than one report put it, "no one could prove it was theirs."

Read the history

As tradition built it

Serves 4. About 1 hour, plus at least 2 hours to marinate.

Ingredients

800 g boneless chicken thigh, cut into chunks
200 g natural yoghurt
2 tbsp lemon juice
2 tsp ground cumin
2 tsp ground coriander
1 tsp ground turmeric
1 tbsp garam masala
3 garlic cloves, crushed
1 tbsp grated ginger
500 ml base gravy (onion, garlic, ginger and tomato, cooked down and blended smooth)
100 ml double cream
2 tbsp tomato purée
1 tsp Kashmiri chilli powder
as needed vegetable oil
to taste salt
a small handful fresh coriander, to finish

Method

Mix the yoghurt, lemon juice, cumin, coriander, turmeric, half the garam masala, garlic and ginger, and marinate the chicken in it, ideally overnight, at least 2 hours.
Thread onto skewers or lay on a hot griddle brushed with the vegetable oil, and cook under a very hot grill or over direct heat, 8 to 10 minutes, turning once, until charred at the edges and just cooked through.
In a separate pan, heat the base gravy with the tomato purée and remaining garam masala, and simmer 5 minutes.
Stir in the chilli powder and cream, and simmer a further 5 minutes until glossy.
Add the grilled chicken to the sauce, and simmer 2 to 3 minutes to finish.
Season with the salt, and scatter with fresh coriander to serve, with rice or naan.

What a modern chef changes

The tandoor heat done properly, and the base gravy respected rather than skipped.

Rungs 2 and 1.

Method

Char the marinated chicken on a Big Green Egg run direct and very hot, fitted with a raised grid, for a genuine tandoor-adjacent sear that a domestic grill cannot match, watching closely so the yoghurt marinade chars rather than burns.
Batch-cook a proper base gravy in real quantity and freeze it in measured portions, treating it exactly as the trade does, as the actual foundation of the dish rather than a shortcut to apologise for.
Finish the sauce with the cream added off the heat, stirred through rather than simmered hard, for a silkier, less split-looking finish than a rolling boil gives.

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