Delhi, India (Moti Mahal, 1947)
Tandoori Chicken
Yogurt-marinated bone-in chicken char-roasted in a 500°C clay oven (or the closest a home kitchen can manage).
In repertoire since Jan 2026
The parent of butter chicken.
Kundan Lal Gujral invented tandoori chicken in 1947 at Moti Mahal in Delhi. A few years later, the same kitchen's leftover tandoori chicken got dropped into a tomato-butter-cream sauce and butter chicken was born. The two dishes are the same dish at different stages — and butter chicken cannot exist without the char-roast that precedes it.
2 · Plant
Then, the plants.
Each ingredient held water and minerals, built sugar out of light over weeks or months, ripened, and was picked. A few ingredients (salt, water) came from a different elemental story.
- Ingredient
Chicken legs
1.5 kg chicken legs and thighs, skin on, bone in, slashed 2 cm deep through the meat
The slashes are non-negotiable — they let the marinade reach the bone and let the heat cook the inside before the outside dries.
Origin not yet authored
- Ingredient
Greek yogurt
300 g full-fat Greek yogurt
Hung yogurt — drained 30 minutes in a sieve — gives an even thicker coat.
Thessaly Greek yogurt dairy - Ingredient
Ginger-garlic paste
3 tbsp ginger-garlic paste (equal parts pounded in a mortar)
Origin not yet authored
- Ingredient
Garlic
Half goes into the ginger-garlic paste; reserve none separately
Tropea allium farm - Ingredient
Kashmiri chili powder
2 tbsp Kashmiri chili powder
Mostly colour, little heat — the tandoori red. Adjust with hotter chili if needed.
Origin not yet authored
- Ingredient
Garam masala
2 tsp garam masala
Origin not yet authored
- Ingredient
Cumin
1 tsp ground cumin
Origin not yet authored
- Ingredient
Coriander
1 tsp ground coriander
Origin not yet authored
- Ingredient
Turmeric
1/2 tsp ground turmeric
Origin not yet authored
- Ingredient
Mustard oil
2 tbsp mustard oil (or 2 tbsp ghee)
Heat the mustard oil to smoking, cool, then use — raw mustard oil is bitter. Skip in favour of ghee if you don't have it.
Origin not yet authored
- Ingredient
Red onion
1 red onion, sliced (for serving)
Origin not yet authored
- Ingredient
Lime wedges
Lime wedges, for serving
Origin not yet authored
3 · Cook
Then, the kitchen.
Heat, time, salt, fat, acid — the recipe that turns the ingredients into something more than their sum.
4 · Plate
Delhi, India (Moti Mahal, 1947)
Tandoori Chicken
Yogurt-marinated bone-in chicken char-roasted in a 500°C clay oven (or the closest a home kitchen can manage).
The dish that introduced North Indian restaurant cooking to the rest of the world. Pre-1947, tandoors were almost exclusively used in northwest Indian / Punjabi villages and Persian kitchens; Gujral’s commercial restaurant tandoor was a novelty in Delhi, and the chicken cooked in it was a novelty everywhere.
The technique works on more than chicken — paneer, fish, lamb, vegetables — but the chicken is the icon. The brick-red colour, the deep slashes, the char along the bone are visual shorthand for Indian restaurant in every city on Earth.
Char is the dish.
Without the blackened edges, the smoke notes, the slightly bitter caramel where the yogurt marinade has burned — it's just spiced chicken. The char is what tandoori means.