Hey hey hey!!! Guess who’s back?! Wait, I’ll give you a hint. She’s super cool, she can cook (allegedly), and she’s kind of one of the most amazing people you know. What’s that? Beyonce, you say? No, I said she can cook. But I mean, you’re pretty close. Oh, you have another guess? Chrissy Teigen. Yeah okay, you guys are pretty good guessers, but the answer I was looking for was ME, but since you guys were so close in terms of everything I’ll let you guys off the hook. So anyways, today’s wonderfully glorious recipe is none other than CHICKEN TIKKA!! Woohoo yeah! So if you don’t already know Chicken Tikka is a seasoned chicken(normally boneless) that is baked in a clay oven, called a tandoor…which well I don’t have, so I used a grill 😅. Essentially the same thing. So I just wanted to let you know that for this recipe I decided to use a box spice mix, I know what you’re thinking! “But, Sana!! That’s cheating!” Well, to that I say, NO! No because these spice packages are great and awfully convenient and you still have to cook, they just help you a little 😀. So I would highly recommend you give them a try. If you want to make this recipe or others you can easily find masala packets (in this case, the Tooba brand) in your local Indian or Pakistani grocery store. Now to move on to the actual recipe.

Ingredients:

  • 2 lbs boneless, skinless chicken (works best, but I used boned)
  • 1-2 tsp garlic paste
  • 1 tsp ginger powder
  • 2-3 tbsp lemon juice (about 1 or 2 lemons)
  • 1 tbsp cumin powder
  • 1/2 packet Tooba Chicken Tikka Masala Mix
  • Oil for the grill

Directions:

This recipe is fairly straightforward, so I won’t bore you with any of the little details. I know, I’m a very considerate person. People tell me that all the time, like ALL the time😎. Anyways so what you’re gonna want to do is take your chicken, whether its boneless or not and make a bunch of slits in the meat using a knife. This will help all the masala get deep into the chicken, because we want flavor everywhere! Where do we want flavor?! EVERYWHERE! So yeah…once that’s done put in the Masala Mix (you only need 1/2 a packet for 2 lbs chicken), garlic paste, ginger powder, and lemon juice. This is what the box will tell you to put in, which is perfectly okay, but I decided to put in a little extra masala in the form of some cumin powder. Yes, it’s perfectly legal to tamper with the box instructions…I think (hahaha)😅. Once everything is in, using your hands, yes your hands (most useful tool in the kitchen) just rub all the ingredients into the chicken. You want to really massage everything in well so the, you guessed it, flavor gets in deep. After a good couple of minutes of massaging chicken, minutes in which you start to reevaluate your life situation, you can cover the chicken and place in a cool place to marinate for at least an hour and any longer is even better. And now, my obligatory collage of me mixing:

Once your chicken looks as delicious as this (and it’s not even cooked yet! Don’t eat it tho, please) and it’s been sitting for at least an hour it’s time to fire up that grill 😃! Woohoo, yeah grill time!! Okay…so I feel like I should warn you, well not warn, but inform you that I am by no means a Grill Master. I know, I exude an aura of cooking excellence, but unfortunately I have yet to master the art of grilling. However, that being said, I still managed to cook a mighty fine Chicken Tikka, so I can’t really be all that bad. I just don’t know all the fancy grill lingo or techniques or anything…heh heh heh. What I do know though, is that grills get hot and that heat cooks things 😀 what more do you really need to know. Okay so enough of my blabbering, time to move on to what I did. So I simply started by heating up the closed-lid grill for a couple minutes on low heat. After that I put down a sheet of aluminum foil on the grill, to be honest I don’t really know why we do this, but it’s just something my family has always done. I think it keeps the grill clean or something, but its not really obligatory so don’t hold yourself too it. You want to first oil the surface of the grill and then cook this chicken (with the grill lid closed) on a relatively low flame and once you start to see some browning and maybe a little bit of charring on the chicken you can flip it over to cook the other side. Also, before flipping oil the top side of the chicken. Since I used a whole chicken, bones and all, different sized pieces took different amounts of time. Not surprisingly the smaller pieces cooked faster, so I took them off sooner and the bigger pieces, like a leg piece, took a little more time so I kept them cooking on a low flame for a good 15-20 minutes per side. A little tip, try separating the smaller and  larger pieces from one another so you can monitor their cooking better. If you’re using uniformly cut boneless chicken pieces, you can disregard everything I just said because they should all finish cooking at around the same time.

As you can see there is also something else grilling alongside the chicken tikka 🤔 what could it be? This grilled meat, that I did see. Can you help guess this mystery?! Hahaha, any zoboomafoo fans out there, no? Okay then, my bad. But yeah, we also grilled up some Seekh Kababs which were very nice, very nice indeed. I’m sure you would love the recipe for them, eh, ehhh?😁Yeah so that was my way of giving you a sneak peek at next bi-weeks recipe. The anticipation is just too much for you guys, isn’t it? Don’t worry it will be well worth the wait…I hope. So yes, once the chicken is done serve it up with some fresh Basmati rice and a side of yogurt, some fresh vegetable, and some green chutney. It’s like, sooooo good! Please, enjoy!

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