Tandoori Chicken

Tandoori chicken is chicken marinated in yoghurt and spices and roasted at very high heat in a tandoor, the cylindrical clay oven it takes its name from. The source states plainly that it originated in the Indian subcontinent, specifically the Punjab, and it sits in Worldwide Recipes under South Asian. The tandoor is what the dish is built around. It runs far hotter than a domestic oven, which is how the chicken cooks fast enough to char on the outside while staying moist inside. Cooking it elsewhere means adapting, and Western kitchens grill or roast instead. This recipe uses a conventional oven, which the source acknowledges as an adaptation. Two ingredients do the work. Yoghurt tenderises through its acid and lactic enzymes and keeps the meat moist, and garam masala provides the aroma. The food colouring in the ingredient list is worth knowing about: the characteristic red is achieved commercially with colouring rather than by any ingredient, and it can simply be left out with no effect on flavour. Tandoori chicken is also the foundation of butter chicken and several other cream-based curries.