Sookhe Masale ka Murg - Dry Masala Chicken - Indian Food

Sookhe Masale ka Murg - Dry Masala Chicken - Indian Food

By Pushpesh Pant

Last night my son pulled this book out of the pantry and said: What is this?  It's like 1000 recipes of food!  How can there be that many different recipes of ANY cuisine.  American's don't have 1000 different versions of their food!

We laughed about it.  Obviously Indian Cuisine has a lot more different choices than we do... but it does seem to be a bit much to say 1000 recipes.  And you wonder how many of these recipes have actually been tested in home kitchens.

So today, we took one of the recipes in the book, altered it some with different spices using the Sous Vide cooking method, and tried it out.  Here is what we did and I'll report the results after:

Ingredients
7 Chicken Boneless Skinless Chicken Breasts
Canned Sliced Jalapenos 
1 teaspoon of New Mexico Chili Powder
2 teaspoons of ground coriander
1/2 teaspoon of turmeric powder
1/2 teaspoon on aniseed seeds
1 teaspoon of garlic powder
1 teaspoon of onion powder
1 teaspoon of white pepper
1 teaspoon of red pepper
1 teaspoon of black pepper
canola oil
ghee
heavy cream
salt

1.  Mix the spices together in a bowl and then pat with your hands into the chicken breasts.
2.  Place the chicken pieces one each with 2 slices of jalapenos and 2 teaspoons of canola oil into a zip lock bag using the water displacement method to get all the air out.
3.  Preheat our Sous Vide waterbath to 62 degrees Celsius.
4.  Put the chicken into the water bath for 1.5 hour.
5.  Heat the Ghee in a frying pan.
6.  Remove the chicken (reserve the juices from each bag) and cook the chicken in the hot ghee for about 1 minute per side.
7.  Blend the juices and jalapenos in a food processor.
8.  Heat the blended juices in a small pan over the stone until hot, adding a little touch of heavy cream at the end.
9.  Salt the sauce to taste. It should be pretty damn hot from the jalapenos.
10.  Serve chicken pieces with basmati rice and lemon wedges, pour sauce of all.

So... How was it?  It turned out really great.  1 of 1000 recipes in the book is pretty good, though you should know we altered it so much I'm not sure it resembles the original much.  Having said this... I don't know that I will ever make it again. It was great, but didn't leap out as overly incredible. I will cook this 'type' of meal again, chicken with chilis, sous vide, basted in ghee, but I will probably change the spice mixture quite a bit as I go.