Before You Start
For most of the world beyond India, chicken tikka was the first taste of tandoor cooking, and it is among the few restaurant classics that survives the move into a home kitchen. Two things make it work, a thorough marinade and strong heat from above or below, and neither depends on owning a clay oven. Boneless chicken is cut into bite-sized cubes, marinated in two stages, and cooked until the surface blisters while the middle stays moist. The two-stage marinade is the key: a first, thin coating of ginger, garlic, lemon and salt seasons the meat inside, and only then does a second, thicker blend of yogurt and spices go on to char and cling under the flame. Going straight to a single marinade is the main reason home versions come out bland beside a good roadside or restaurant tikka.
Where It Comes From
Where chicken tikka comes from is genuinely disputed, and it is more honest to say so than to name a single city. The tandoor, and the habit of marinating meat in yogurt and spices before cooking it fast over high heat, are documented in the Northwest Frontier, in the area around today's Peshawar in Pakistan, and after Partition in 1947 Punjabi refugee cooks brought tandoori cooking to Delhi and Punjab, an expansion most often linked to restaurants such as Moti Mahal in Delhi. Both Colleen Taylor Sen and Lizzie Collingham trace tandoori chicken and tikka to this Punjab and Peshawar continuum, not to one inventor or place, and the dish eaten today in Delhi and Punjab is best seen as a Northwest Frontier tradition that was reworked and made popular after 1947, not as a wholly separate Indian invention. Chicken tikka masala, the gravy dish made from grilled tikka pieces, has a separate and equally contested history centred on South Asian restaurants in Britain, and it is a different dish from the one in this recipe.
How to Make It
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Prep
Start with the first marinade
In a bowl, turn the cubes of chicken through the ginger-garlic paste, lemon juice and salt until every surface is wet. Refrigerate under a cover for 20 minutes or more, which gives you time to mix the second marinade. Because this first layer is thin, it travels into the flesh and flavours it from within, a job that one thick yogurt coating alone cannot manage.
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Prep
Blend and apply the second marinade
Beat the yogurt smooth in a clean bowl and mix in the chilli powder, garam masala, cumin, coriander, turmeric, crushed kasuri methi, oil and salt. Scrape it over the chicken and massage it into every cube. The oil is not a detail to skip, because it anchors the spices to the meat so they scorch into a crust and do not dry out and fall off over the fire.
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Prep
Chill while it marinates
Seal the bowl and keep it in the refrigerator for at least 4 hours, or leave it overnight, as long as 24 hours, for a stronger taste and a softer bite. Marinate chicken only in the refrigerator, never on the counter, because raw poultry at room temperature sits in the range where bacteria multiply fastest, and no quantity of spice or acid makes that safe.
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Prep
Thread onto skewers
Take the chicken from the refrigerator and push the pieces onto skewers, leaving a small space between them so that heat can reach and char the sides as well as the tops. If you are using bamboo skewers, make sure they have soaked for at least 30 minutes, so the bare ends do not burn and snap under the heat.
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Cook
Sear over strong direct heat
Get the grill, grill pan or broiler properly hot before the chicken goes on, because this is a fast, high-heat dish and not a slow one. Set the skewers down and leave them for 3 to 4 minutes a side, until you see true charring along the edges, not merely browning. An oven broiler on its highest setting, with the rack placed close to the element, is a fair stand-in for a grill.
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Cook
Brush and finish cooking
Rotate the skewers every few minutes and paint them lightly with melted butter or oil on each turn. The chicken is ready when all sides show dark patches and the meat is cooked through, roughly 12 to 15 minutes in total, depending on how hot your fire runs. Push a thermometer into the thickest piece, and look for at least 74°C (165°F). Thighs remain juicier than breast at that temperature, which explains their use here.
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Serve
Rest briefly, then dress
Leave the skewers off the heat for 2 to 3 minutes before sliding the chicken off. Sprinkle it with chaat masala and a squeeze of lemon, and serve at once with the vinegared onions. Tikka loses its appeal as it cools and the char softens, so it belongs straight off the fire and not on a warming tray.
Swaps That Work
Boneless breast meat can stand in for thighs, but it dries out sooner under tandoor-like heat, so remove it a couple of minutes earlier and check its temperature more often. Greek yogurt can replace ordinary thick yogurt with no other change. If you cannot find Kashmiri chilli powder, use half as much of a hotter chilli powder along with a little paprika for colour, since Kashmiri chilli is prized chiefly for its deep red and its gentle heat, not its strength. A charcoal grill gives the smokiest, most authentic result, yet a very hot cast-iron grill pan indoors, finished beneath a hot broiler, comes close for a kitchen without outdoor space.
Turning the Heat Up or Down
Chilli powder in the second marinade is the only real source of heat, and you can vary it as you please because charring depends on the fire and on the sugars in the marinade, not on the chilli. For a milder tikka, use only Kashmiri chilli powder, which is gentle, and add no other chilli. For more heat, add a teaspoon of a hotter, finely ground chilli powder or a pinch of cayenne beside the Kashmiri, which preserves the red colour while raising the fire. If you overshoot, a last dusting of chaat masala after grilling brings freshness and not real heat.
Where Cooks Go Wrong
Rushing the marinade is the usual failing: half an hour gives the spices and acid no time to penetrate, so the result is merely seasoned chicken and not tikka, which is why at least 4 hours, ideally overnight, is worth planning for. Cooking over heat that is too weak is the second, since it gives grey, boiled-looking chicken instead of char, and tikka needs strong, direct heat applied quickly, not gentle cooking over a long period. Leaving out the oil in the marinade is the third, as the spice coating dries and drops off on the grill instead of forming a cohesive crust. Last, uneven cutting means some pieces are overdone and dry by the time the large ones reach a safe temperature, so aim for even 1.5-inch cubes.
Keeping and Warming Up Leftovers
To keep: Do not keep chicken in its raw marinade past a day; the acid in it will start to ruin the texture of the meat, and it should be covered and chilled throughout. After grilling, tikka lasts as long as 3 days in a sealed container in the refrigerator. Freezing is possible for up to 2 months, but the char and the bite suffer after thawing, so it is only a fallback.
To warm up: Revive leftover tikka with a few minutes per side in a very hot dry skillet or under the broiler, which recovers some of the char, while the microwave toughens the meat and erases the smoky edge. If a microwave is all you have, cover the chicken loosely and heat it in short bursts, then place it briefly under a broiler to crisp the outside. Whatever the method, make sure the chicken is steaming hot all the way through before serving.
Safe Handling
Handling raw poultry brings extra requirements beyond everyday tidiness. The marinating belongs in the refrigerator every time, with no exceptions for short waits on the counter. Reserve one board and knife for the raw chicken, and scrub hands, tools and work surfaces that met the meat or its marinade with hot soapy water before anything else touches them. Leftover marinade must not become a sauce or a drizzle unless it is first boiled hard for at least a minute, as raw chicken sat in it the whole time. Cook to an internal temperature of at least 74°C (165°F), taken in the thickest part of the biggest piece with a thermometer instead of judged by colour, and put leftovers in the refrigerator within two hours.
Where to Read More
- Colleen Taylor Sen, "Feasts and Fasts: A History of Food in India" (Reaktion Books) — on the Northwest Frontier origins of tandoori cooking and its spread into Punjab and Delhi after 1947.
- Lizzie Collingham, "Curry: A Tale of Cooks and Conquerors" (Oxford University Press) — on the Peshawar-to-Delhi history of the tandoor and the restaurants that popularized tandoori chicken and tikka.