Mint Chutney
Zainab Shah
410 ratings with an average rating of 4 out of 5 stars
410
5 minutes
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Mix the yogurt, spices, ginger paste, garlic paste, chopped green chiles and salt in a large bowl to make a pasty marinade. Add the chicken and thoroughly rub the marinade into the meat. Cover and refrigerate for at least 2 hours or up to overnight.
Place a tawa, griddle or comal on the stove if you have one and center a large stock pot or Dutch oven on top of it. Otherwise, place the pot directly on the stove. The stock pot or Dutch oven should be large enough to hold the chicken pieces in a single layer, and deep enough to gather steam. Add enough ghee to coat the bottom of the pot, then add the chicken in one layer, meatier side down. Cover and cook on medium for 10 minutes.
Turn the heat to the lowest setting and continue cooking for another 20 minutes. Flip the chicken and continue cooking, covered, for another 30 minutes. Remove the lid. Cook on medium until the juices in the pot have mostly evaporated, 10 to 12 minutes. Transfer the chicken to a serving platter and pour any juices from the pot over the chicken. Garnish with cilantro and chile flakes and serve with chutney and lemon wedges for squeezing.
Great recipe: The marinade is highly similar to that for tandoori: see indianhealthyrecipes.com/tandoori-chicken-recipe/. I'd use an Instant Pot instead, increasing yoghurt to 1/2 cup (safety margin): 6 mins pressure + natural release for chicken thighs. (10 min pressure + natural release for Instant-Pot chicken cacciatore with *unmarinated* whole bone-in thighs resulted in somewhat overcooked meat: the cartilage had fully softened.)
Hmmm ... dumb question perhaps, but could you do it in a crock pot?
The conventional kitchen term in the US for a metal heat diffuser placed over a flame is - from the Yiddish - "blech". Any flat metal device that maintains contact with the cooking vessel will do. As with any stew or braise it may be easier - after initial heating (end of step 2) - to put the heated pot in an oven at 250F and allow cooking to finish at this relatively low temperature. Ovens are much more consistent and manageable than range tops. Less watching as no potential for burning.
Water? What water? It magically appears in step 3. Do you mean pan juices?
In Indian cooking, ground red chile refers to dried ripe cayennes. There are several grades of heat - mild, regular, extra-hot. The mild variety (basically a medium paprika) is "Kashmiri" chili powder, where the chilies are grown under cool conditions with plenty of water (both reduce capsaicin production). Kashmiri, high on flavor/color and low on heat, is acceptable to most Western palettes. In the recipe, "red chile" would refer to regular, but you can use all paprika if you wish.
You could also use a cast iron skillet instead of a griddle, my dutch oven will fit inside mine.
I have been cooking drumsticks using this technique for more than 20 years. It works wonderfully but only with drumsticks - can't use it with thighs or breast. In reference to the comment about "water", it really comes from the chicken an and yogurt. More appropriate term would be "juices". Organic chicken produces better results. Another variation would be to reduce the amount of yogurt in the marinade and add finely chopped tomatoes.
RE: Bird's eye chilies: If you like heat, go for it, but I think that 1-2 Thai chilies would be optimal. (I make my own habanero sauce, but I usually put it on the side for individual preference: once you put chilies in a dish, you can't take them out.) North Indian/Pakistani cooking uses chili heat modestly: the real fire-eaters are in South India, particularly the Hyderabad area: India's chili exchange is based in Guntur, a city in that region.
So this comes up often actually -- what is ground red chile? It's not chili powder, it's not ground red pepper, it's not red pepper powder, so... a bit more specificity here would help. Too generic a term, easily misinterpreted.
Great cooking method. My wife isn't a fan of spicy food (she's Spanish), so I made a simpler marinade with just yogurt, minced garlic, pimentón (both sweet and hot), salt, pepper and a glug of olive oil. Used chicken thighs and the result was simply amazing. I will do this again.
No dumb at all. I'm wondering the same thing, although I think we'd need to go with higher settings than are called for on the stove. I use my multi cooker (newer crockpot that I can sauté in) all the time.
That was remarkable. I served it over toasted rice with a guava/ginger/mint chutneyish thing. Most excellent. I used a little too much fat and my dutch oven was a wee small but I followed the technique and it delicious none the less. This one is going into the rotation.
I assume it means Indian chilli powder and not the kind usually used in American which is made from Mexican chillies and not as spicy. British comments on American recipes often suggest massively reducing the chilli powder because our Indian variety is much hotter than one made with Mexican chillies
Agree. What water and where?
Why does the accompanying photo show chicken with the skin ON?
I did this one drumsticks and bone in, skin on breasts. The breasts turned out okay with not moderations to the recipe. A little dry, but not too much. After I took the chicken out I cooked down the juices and used a little apple cider vinegar to deglaze, made a great sauce which helped with the dryness.
What’s comparable to thai green chillies?
Is this doable in an instapot?
The word "water" does not appear in this recipe. What is all the confusion about in the comments?
Could this be done in a steam oven?
As someone said, this is a fussy recipe. I subbed about 20 drumsticks for the leg quarters, and didn't hassle with a dawa or any other method of tempering heat - it really is unnecessary. Half the batch was cooked in a heavy steel 12" pan, the other half in a cast iron dutch oven. Came out great! I also subbed avocado oil for ghee, and threw some onions and garam masala into cooking vessels to saute for a bit before adding chicken. Served with a variety of Indian pickles and a green chutney.
Because I don't have these pans, I tried an oven. I used a chicken breast wrapped in tin foil to trap steam. Sort of worked. In hindsight, I should use the same tinfoil pouch but on a pan to generate steam more quickly. In my toaster oven I did 400F for 45 minutes to cook half a chicken breast. Lower temp or shorter time meant pink middle. It's definitely moister than a baked chicken (since more moisture is retained). I doubled marinade to get heat. P.S. don't use guajillo peppers. I'm dumb.
Delicious recipe! I doubled the yogurt and spices for 3 legs/thighs. Cooked per the recipe until the end of step 2, then put in the oven at 250 for the rest of the time. The last 15 minutes I put back on the stove and boiled the juices down a bit.
Could I use a cast iron griddle?
Could you do this in a steam oven, without a lid?
This was a hit, and since I use an induction cooktop the heat regulation was very easy. Overall a very easy cooking method that leaves lots of time and attention for any other components of the dinner. The mint chutney is essential, and the combination is superb!
The timing was off by quite a lot. The cooking time at the top of the recipe says 1 hour, but in the directions it calls for 1 hour 15 minutes. In reality, it took 90 minutes. The first hour of steaming resulted in barely cooked meat, so I raised the temp, continued with the cover, and let the contents cook at a lively bubble for 15. Then I removed the tawa and the lid, and continued with a lively simmer for another 15. Fall off the bone meat was delicious, but looked nothing like the photo
Is the sauce "mint chutney?" Where’s the recipe for the sauce?
Where is the recipe for mint chutney? Shouldn’t it be included?
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