About Ghee and Chicken
We recently had subtly spiced kababs called makrana kababs at A restaurant called Marrakesh in Pune. We were literally bowled over by the subtle flavors and juicy chicken. There is also a recipe called ghee roast chicken that is quite popular in india. However i had never known about it till i had it during our trip last year. When i imagined ghee roast chicken i had imagined something with rich flavors of ghee coming through and a crispy skin roast with juicy and tender meat. What i have had twice since then has been quite boldly flavored with no hints of ghee flavor coming through. We wanted to experiment and create something to our liking. Since we actually didnt roast the chicken, and we cooked it on a skillet we are aptly calling it ghee tawa chicken (tawa is skillet).
In india most chicken is cooked without the skin. We did the same for this recipe opting for boneless skinless chicken thighs. We used a technique quite popular in many homes and featured in food 52 genius recipes, of cooking the chicken slowly, on a skillet. It relies on the chicken fat to be rendered. However since ghee is a fat which can withstand longer periods of cooking, we emplyed this for our boneless skinless chicken breats and cooked it at fairly lower temperatures.
Our ghee tawa chicken masala
We made our own little spice blend to complement our recipe. We decided to focus on a couple of aromatics and use two kinds of crushed peppers do most our work.
We chose only the skin of cardamom pods since the actual cardamom seeds could make this bitter because of the amount of time we cook this. We ground them coarsely and we also did the same with kasoori methi. We also crushed black and white peppercorns coarsely and mixed all of the above with sea salt. (2 cardamom pod skins, 1 tsp kasuri methi, 0.5 tsp black pepper, 0.5 tsp white pepper, 2 tsp salt).
Our ghee tawa chicken
We seasoned our boneless skinless chicken thighs with our masala blend generously.
We set a pan on medium heat (5/10) to melt 3 tsp of ghee and warm it. When warm, we slid the thighs into the pan alongwith a few slices of lime and ginger to flavor our ghee. We made sure not to use any turmeric or red chili powder in the recipe to keep the flavors focussed around the ghee and aromatics. We then reduced the heat to 3 and cooked the chicken in the tawa very slowly checking every 10 minutes. As it cooks you can see the chicken slowly cooking by forming a nice crisp crust and the pink starts turning into white from bottom up. Here you need to control the heat if it happens too fast and starts to brown it too much. We were on 2/10 heat within 10 minutes.
We should have evened out our chicken thighs by flattening then but we did not. Hence the thinner one was done sooner at around 20 minute mark and we flipped it. The fatter one was done at 30 min mark. Once both were flipped each took about 10 mins on the other side. Our lime and ginger were also caramelized by the time if first flipping and maybe thats a good hint too.
Once cooked we let them rest. Then we cut them on a cutting board and brushed with some ghee and cream/milk mixture giving it some moistness and shine.
We served with some lime wedges to squeeze on and a sprinkling of cilantro. We also tried this with cilantro, mint, ginger lime chutney and it tasted wonderful. The chicken is crispy on edges and juicy and delicately cooked on the inside.
This looks so yummy!
We were quite excited to try this way to cook it and also about the spice mix we made up. Quite pleased with the results since were not sure how it will come out π
Thanks Sujhey, plan to do this with more variations π
Thanks Guys, Your Recipe Was Too Fantastic. Me and My Family Loved it. I Will Share your Rrecipe with my friends.
Thanks Guys, Your Recipe Was Too Fantastic. Me and My Family Loved it. I Will Share your Rrecipe with my friends. Hope they will love it too.