The real truth about Tandoori Chicken.

Recently I had a healthy argument(trust me!!) with a fellow industry professional regarding the origin of Tandoori Chicken and  I realized  through that discussion that my good friend was unable to accept the fact that Tandoori Chicken was in fact NOT an Indian Dish.

An Indian meal is never complete with some kind of a kebab or for that matter if a family is sitting down for dinner at an Indian restaurant(no matter if its in a luxury hotel or a Highway Dhabba),the meal never ends without Tandoori Chicken or any dish from the now so famous section of any menu aptly named “from the clay oven”.

Tandoori Chicken is as indigenous to Indian food as Pizza is to Italy or Cannabis to Rock and Roll. Every establishment,state,city has their own version of it but the origin of the dish has some very startling and astonishing facts.

As I had been finding my way across numerous kitchens in India during my intial years ; both large and small I always wondered why do we have Tandoori Chicken in Indian Cuisine when it actually has origins from Afghanistan. But then it struck me that does it actually??

A lot has been written and published about “Chicken Tikka Masala” the famous Indian dish which made it big in UK, to the extent that it was rumored to be their national dish for a long time running,and how a cook in one of the billion India restaurants in London invented it after a customer returned a plate of tikka saying that it was too dry to consume ,used some India spices and a can of tomato soup to make the now famous dish. But we hardly consider the fact that there wont be any Chicken Tikka Masala if there was no Tandoori Chicken.

So what is the real truth about it…

No its not from Afghanistan or the Western Frontier because Tandoors DO NOT EXIST there at all.Its only in India and Pakistan that you will find tandoors .Tandoors have existed in India from the time of Indus Valley Civilization. There is archaeological evidence of tandoor being found at numerous dig sites along the Indus River and which have striking resemblance to the present day Tandoors.

India heard of Tandoori Chicken when a famous restaurant from Delhi (which still exists today, and has a number of fake branches)called Moti Mahal near Daryaganj introduced the dish in the mid 1950’s which was then eventually taken to the Great Britain in the next 10 years where it gained much popularity.It caught on so much that opening an Indian Restaurant without Tandoori Chicken on the menu was like hara-kiri. The origins of the dish as I found out from Cooks who have been handed down the recipe of this dish from their seniors say that the origin lies with the partition of India after Independence. During this time of chaos when people fled to either side a lot of Lahore(now in present Pakistan) refugees came to the Indian side for better lives and it was they who started this popular dish . Moti Mahal was not the inventor of this dish but just a medium to make it popular.

The most common notion being that the dish is of Mughal origins,but the major ingredients used in most versions of this dish are natural to the Indian Sub-continent.

The Punjabis should be given the much needed appreciation for inventing the Tandoori Chicken as we know it today. Punjabis have been known to cook rotis in a kind of clay oven which has modernized to a Tandoor as we see it today . Dhabbas were the Punjabi version of Udupi restaurant. Limited Menu, Fast service, Home food, when dhabbas originated in the 1950’s the Punjabi immigrants dint have enough financial support to buy utensils and stuff so the made a couple of tandoor/clay ovens, where the cooked rotis,Chicken and even dal (which was cooked over simmering coal the whole night) making the menu short and simple.

Once on my visit to Delhi a very close friend of and a pure Punjabi in all aspects took me to a dhabba on the outskirts of the town which according to him served the most authentic Tandoori Chicken of all,and boy was he right(in fact he even bet his Royal Enfield;a punjabi sign of being macho,on it).Being a Chef and foodie I have lost count of the different version of Tandoori Chicken I’ve had till now , but this was by far the best one I had. Being curious and striking a conversation with owner I found out that he belonged to one of the first family of refugees from Punjab that came during and his version of Tandoori Chicken was the closest to the original.

But then.. is it??Gordon Ramsay on his famous television series “Gordon’s  Great Escape” tried hard to find the recipe but had a mixed view of the origin of the dish. Heston Blumenthal on one of his visits to India went mad knowing how one dish can have so many recipes from its country of origin.

Chefs from around the world took this process of cooking to a different level Fillet of Tandoori Halibut with Cucumber raita is a favorite with Chef Ramsay’s .Version of Tandoori Salmon and Lobster are quite common in India too(though most of this adventurous dishes taste horrible).We have bastardized this concept to a point of no return, new age cooks rather twats have lost the real Tandoori Chicken to commercialization, loads of artificial food color and the ever so boring and tasteless broiler chicken, rather than preserving what is heritage we have literally left it to the fire.

But some places still do a decent version of it till now.I am pretty sure you will find one in your city better still try to do some cooking at home, its not a Godzillean task.I have put links to two of my favorite and easy tandoor dishes for the budding chef to the home cook at the end of the article. Give it a shot , post pictures and let me know and how was it and most importantly remember to share it.

My Tandoori Recipes