Chicken Tikka Masala With Paneer & Chilli

Chicken Paneer Tikka Chilli Masala

Chicken Tikka Masala is a favourite in the ‘Ome Made house. Only thing is, we have to have it a little hotter. Madras hot is about right for us. Paneer is also a great addition. If you’re not a fan or you’re struggling to get hold of some, it can always be left out.

Chicken Tikka & Paneer

For this recipe I use chicken breast which I coat with a basic Tandoori Marinade and bake in the oven. I also coat the paneer in the marinade as well and bake that alongside the chicken.

For this recipe I use 1kg of chicken and 400g of paneer. This will feed the six of us with a little left over for 2 more light meals. If you want less just halve the ingredients.

For the marinade I take 4 teaspoons of ‘Ome Made Tandoori Masala (you can use your own mix or another brand) and mix that with about 4 tablespoons of plain yoghurt. I also added about half a teaspoon of red food colouring powder, this is optional as it’s purely cosmetic.

I leave the chicken breasts whole, just scoring the tops of them slightly to help the marinade stick. I also leave the paneer whole in a block. It’s a lot easier and less fiddly to cut the paneer in to blocks and slice the chicken after they’re cooked. I also like the contrast of the red marinade on the outside against the white interior of the chicken and paneer.

The chicken and paneer want cooking in a pre-heated oven at 200℃ for around 25 minutes.

Onion Paste

Quite often when I’m cooking curries I will purée the onions, garlic and ginger before frying. However for this recipe I fry sliced onions with a little salt until they are starting to caramelise. I then add sliced garlic, ginger and fry some more before adding some chopped coriander stalks, some diced red pepper and sliced chilli. The mixture is then cooked to soften the peppers before being left to cool so it can be blended in a food processor.

This paste is the fried again before adding the spices and everything else.

This method gives a lovely deep and sweet, from the natural caramelisation of the onion, base to build the curry on.

Spices

For this curry I use my ‘Ome Made B.I.R Curry Masala which is a Madras style masala with a few added extras to give that authentic Indian restaurant flavour. Of course you could make up your own masala, or use one of the recipes from the many curry chefs out there such as Mistys, Dans or Als! And of course you could use any shop bought curry masala/powder.

I also use Kashmiri Chilli powder. This is mainly to give a deep rich red colour. If you haven’t got any either leave it out or use a little sweet paprika instead. Also I add some chilli powder for some heat. If you don’t want extra heat and prefer a more ‘traditional’ Tikka Masala, then leave the chilli out.

Tomatoes

For the tomatoes in this curry I use a little tomato purée and tinned tomatoes. The tinned tomatoes get blitzed in the food processor for that smooth texture that you get in an Indian restaurant or takeaway.

If you haven’t got a food processor you could get a way with cooking the onion etc and instead of pureeing them as described above you could carry on adding the spices, tomato purée and then use a stick blender to blitz the whole lot in the pan.

I think that about covers everything.

If you want to read some more about curries have a look at my other post British Indian Restaurant Curry.

So here is the recipe… enjoy!