[phepia]

I attempted my own dish of this today and it failed miserably. I am looking for some advice on improving it please.

I marinated bite size chicken breasts in a tesco pre mixed tandoori mix with some plain yoghurt overnight.
I then placed it in a dish and oven cooked it for 20 minutes whilst I was cooking the rice.

Despite tons of marinate the dish came out really dry, with the yoghurt splitting and "curdling"
I have made this kind of meal before and it never went like this.
I think I may have overcooked it, hence the splitting of the yoghurt.
Is there anything I can do for it to come out more "saucy" and not so dry?
Would adding cream to it stop the splitting?

It tasted really nice, I just expected more sauce, which as it all curdled as such didn't work.

[maggie thecat]

Lower the oven temp next time and stir half way through to redistribute everything and guage the remaining cooking time. Don't overcook. Too much heat and too long cooking time probably caused the yogurt to break.

[degsyhufc]

Take excess marinade off the chicken and cook it under the grill or in a chargrill pan (or BBQ) - on skewers if you wish.

Cook the sauce seperately.

[phepia]

I think it was too high as it had a crust on the top.

Maybe the stove would be a better way of cooking so I can supervise it.

I wouldn't want to cook it separately as it has raw chicken juice in and I would still need it to get high ish temperatures to kill germs. But perhaps if I stove cooked both I could stop the germs and the splitting.

[Victoria Sponge]

Tandoori chicken doesn't have a sauce though…well I didn't think it did anyway.

[spectra]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Victoria Sponge

Tandoori chicken doesn't have a sauce though…well I didn't think it did anyway.

me neither

[fizzle90]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Victoria Sponge

Tandoori chicken doesn't have a sauce though…well I didn't think it did anyway.

Quote:

Originally Posted by spectra

me neither

Or me...

Edit: and it's supposed to be cooked in a tandoor oven..hence the name. I don't think it'll come out exactly how you want if you're roasting chicken pieces in a normal oven and wanting sauce too.

[Watcher #1]

We make a version at home, which is nice (but clearly not authentic) from a recipe book. A proper tandoor gets hotter than a domestic oven (IIRC)

As the oven should be really hot, you don't want to be making 'bite sized' pieces, as they will dry out. I use thighs normally, with a couple of slashes to let the marinade get into the flesh. It's easy to gut up thichs/breats/egs once cooked, and the meat will stay moister.

After marinating, you only want a thin layer left on the meat before cooking. The remaining marinade goes into the sauce.

[grassmarket]

It's difficult to do because a tandoori oven cooks at twice the heat of an ordinary oven, so the outside gets seared while the inside stays juicy. Like the others say, you need a big bit of chicken deeply scored through with the marinade rubbed in, small bits will never work.. Cook on metal skewers so that the heat goes quickly to the middle of the chicken, that will help keep it moist.

My tip for an accompaniment is to buy a big pot of yoghurt, put half the yoghurt for the marinade with the spice paste, and then use the other half to make a sidedish of raita - finely chopped spring onions, diced cucumber, toasted then lightly crushed cumin seeds, and a little salt.