🇩🇪 Deutsch 🇬🇧 English
Chicken Chettinad
South Indian, dark, with freshly roasted masala
👨🍳 Pro🍛 Main Course🍗 With Meat🕓 75 min
From Tamil Nadu, and the hottest dish in this collection. Its character comes from a spice blend roasted and ground just before cooking — each spice gets its own roasting time, and star anise and kalpasi are what set it apart from every other chicken curry.
👨🍳 Pro: Fermenting, deep-frying or layering. Needs time, patience and a quiet afternoon.
Prep30 min
Cook time45 min
Total75 min
ServesServes 4
Contains:
MustardSesame
Refers to the recipe as written here. Store-bought ingredients may carry traces — please check the packet.
Ingredients
0 of 17✅ All set to cook!
Method
0 of 7🎉 All done — enjoy!
- Rub the chicken with turmeric, salt, and a little ginger-garlic paste, and let it sit for 30 minutes.
- For the Chettinad masala, dry-roast each ingredient SEPARATELY: coriander seeds for 2 minutes, fennel and cumin for 1 minute, the chilies for 1 minute, pepper for 30 seconds, the whole spices for 30 seconds, and the coconut last for 90 seconds until golden brown.
- Let everything cool together and grind with 4 tbsp water into a fine paste.
- Heat oil, let the mustard seeds pop, add the curry leaves. Fry the onions 10 minutes until deep brown.
- Add the remaining ginger-garlic paste for 2 minutes, then cook the tomato puree for 8 minutes.
- Add the ground masala and fry 8 minutes, until it darkens and the oil separates out. This step is what takes the raw taste out of the paste.
- Add the chicken, turn it for 5 minutes, add 200 ml hot water and salt, cover and braise 25 minutes. Uncover and reduce to the thickness you want.
Tips
- The point of no return is, again, the roasting. The pepper is the most sensitive spice — burnt pepper turns the whole blend bitter, and the blend is the dish.
- Coconut goes last, and watch it: it goes from golden brown to black within twenty seconds.
- Sesame oil is the standard fat in Tamil Nadu and that is why it is listed first here. With coconut oil, sesame drops out as an allergen — the dish works just the same.
- Kalpasi is hard to find and still makes the difference — it is the earthy, almost smoky note you cannot quite name in Chettinad dishes.
Shop the Ingredients
Everything for this recipe is available from us in Munich — in store or delivered.
