Tandoori chicken recipe, learn how to make tandoori chicken at home baked in your regular oven. If you save some time for marination, tandoori chicken works as a great starter recipe when you are entertaining.
Growing up, tandoor-baked dishes were not part of our menu whether we were eating our or at home. Kottayam had no good North Indian restaurant from what I can remember and we invariably defaulted to Indian Chinese food during Monthly eating out routine. Not that I am complaining, I love me some chilli chicken and fried rice no doubt, but it took me 23 years and a move to Hyderabad to truly relish and appreciate a good tandoor-baked dish be it nan or tandoori chicken and kebabs.
The smoky, charred look and taste of a tandoori dish is hard to replicate exactly at home, in my opinion, but you can get very close if you use the right ingredients and use the right temperature to bake the dishes in your regular oven. I had bookmarked this tandoori chicken recipe years ago on Radhika’s website and since then, it’s been on my mind.
I rarely buy chicken to cook at home (whatever you see in the blog is it and I space out cooking with meat at home by a few weeks at least) but one day, I set out to buy all the ingredients and get this tandoori chicken preparation out of my to-do list and into this blog.
The key to a good homemade tandoori chicken recipe is the marination. If you get that right, the rest will fall into place pretty easily. The marinade can be adjusted and adapted to your taste but I would recommend not skipping any of the steps or ingredients needed. The next crucial part is the baking itself. We use very high temperatures for the baking and so it’s important to pre-heat your oven and get it really hot before cooking the chicken.
If you love Indian chicken recipes, let me share a few of my favourites:
Dry chilli chicken
Andhra green chilli chicken
Chettinad pepper chicken
Madurai chicken 65 recipe
Chicken majestic
Chicken thoran
Tandoori Chicken Recipe
Ingredients
Prepare
- A large refrigerator box or ziplock bag for marination
- Aluminium foil for baking
- Green chutney lime wedges, and raw onions for serving
For Marination
- 4 chicken leg pieces with skin on
- 3/4 cup thick plain yogurt or curd
- 1/4 cup cubed onion
- 1 clove of garlic use 3-4 if the smaller Indian variety
- A small piece of ginger
- 1 tbsp fresh lime juice
- 1/2 tsp Kashmiri chilli powder
- 1 green chilli optional
- 1 tsp garam masala
- A few drops of red food colour optional
- Salt to taste
Before Baking
- 2-3 tsp oil
To serve
- Lemon wedges
- Raw onion slices
- Green chutney
Instructions
Marinating the chicken
- It's best to marinate the chicken for 8 hours minimum or ideally overnight
- Clean the chicken legs and make deep slits into the flesh part making sure your knife touches bone each time and it's deep enough. This will ensure that the marinade will go deep into the chicken pieces
- In a blender, blend the 3/4 cup yogurt, 1/4 cup cubed onion, 1 clove of garlic, a small piece of ginger, 1/2 tsp chilli powder, 1 tbsp lime juice, 1 tsp garam masala, salt to taste, and a few drops of red food colour (if using), until it's a smooth paste
- Place the chicken pieces in a bowl or a ziplock bag and pour the marinade in
- Using your fingers, turn the chicken pieces in the marinade until well coated.
- Refrigerate for 8 hours or overnight
- Baking the chicken tandoori
- When you are ready to bake the chicken, prepare the oven by pre-heating to 450F/230C. If your oven doesn't have this setting, just turn it to the maximum heat setting
- As your oven pre-heats, line a baking sheet with aluminium foil and grease with oil
- Take out your marinating chicken pieces and life out a piece of chicken, letting the marinade run back into the bowl or ziplock bag
- Place on the aluminium foil and repeat with the remaining pieces of chicken
- Lay it out so they pieces don't touch each other
- Make sure there is no excess marinade on the chicken or in the baking sheet because otherwise,the high temperatures we are using to bake the tandoori chicken will burn it
- It took me 15 minutes to get the dark, burnt, and patchy look on the chicken legs and they were done perfectly
- You can baste (spread) some of the marinade over the chicken midway through baking and put it back in the oven, I didn't bother with this step
- Serve with lemon wedges, green chutney, and raw onion slices
How to make Tandoori Chicken in an Oven – Step by Step Pictures
Clean the chicken legs and make deep slits into the flesh part making sure your knife touches bone each time and it’s deep enough. This will ensure that the marinade will go deep into the cut areas. Leave the skin on the chicken pieces, this will ensure a crispy outside and juicy inside when the tandoori chicken is ready to serve
In a blender, blend the 3/4 cup yogurt, 1/4 cup cubed onion, 1 green chilli, 1 clove of garlic, a small piece of ginger, 1/2 tsp chilli powder, 1 tbsp lime juice, 1 tsp garam masala and salt to taste,until it’s a smooth paste
Add some red food colour to get that restaurant-style chicken tandoori looks. This is optional and doesn’t affect the taste.
Place the chicken pieces in a bowl or a ziplock bag and pour the marinade in
Using your fingers, turn the chicken pieces in the marinade until well coated. Refrigerate for 8 hours or overnight
When you are ready to bake the chicken, prepare the oven by pre-heating to 450F/230C. If your oven doesn’t have this setting, just turn it to the maximum heat setting. As your oven pre-heats, line a baking sheet with aluminium foil and grease with oil.
Take out your marinating chicken pieces and life out a piece of chicken, letting the marinade run back into the bowl or ziplock bag. Place on the aluminium foil and repeat with the remaining pieces of chicken
Lay it out so they pieces don’t touch each other. Make sure there is no excess marinade on the chicken or in the baking sheet because otherwise,the high temperatures we are using to bake the tandoori chicken will burn it (like you can see in the below picture).
It took me 15 minutes to get the dar, and patchy look on the chicken legs and they were done perfectly. You can baste (spread) some of the marinade over the chicken midway through baking and put it back in the oven, I didn’t bother with this step
Serve with lemon wedges, green chutney, and raw onion slices.
For tandoori chicken recipe in Hindi, Urdu, Malay, French, Spanish, Italian, Tamil, Telugu etc please use the Google translate button in the sidebar.
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Hi,
I tried out this recipe today for lunch. it came out quite well albeit a little too dry. Any ideas to help it retain some moisture?
more moisture in the marinade, lesser heat, and more oil, all will work 🙂
I wanted to know chicken has to be roasted or baked in oven,and it has to be kept for grilling or in baking tray.
you bake the chicken, not grill.
Dear Nags,
I have a microwave with convection mode.
Please tell me exactly wbich mode will be required to set for this receipe.
Also , for baking the cakes.. it will be very useful, if you tell exactly which mode to be used of a microwave convection type.
Rgds,
Sonali
i would love to do this sonali, however i don’t use a microwave convection oven myself so i am not familiar with the settings. the best way for you to find this out is to read your oven manual or speak with retailers directly, wherever you purchased it.
Hi..
Can i bake it at 400F/200C??
Thats the max temp on my oven..
give it a shot, you may just need to bake it longer
I cant thank you enough for sharing these tasty recipes, last time I tried your mughlai vegetable korma and it was fantastic. This tandoori will be a perfect companion this weekend with some chilled beer to wipe of the month end stress, and as I love to customize things in my way I will be adding a bit more spices in it to give it some exciting twists and turns, like some coriander powder, dhaniya powder, mustered powder and for that I would prefer shalimar chef spice range. and after the tandoori is ready will sprinkle some chaat masala or jaljeera over the top. Will keep you posted about the end result. 🙂
Tried this recipe sometime back.The chicken was juicy and delicious.
thank you Ria!
Your Tandoori Chicken looks amazing and am sure it tastes equally good! Even the recipe is easy to follow.
thank you ann, hope you try it
Hi, thanks for sharing the recipe, its looking yummy.
thank you gaurav
Hi Nags,
Thanks to your recipes, I was able to make yummy food for my Indian hubby (I am not Indian). Recipes are pretty easy to follow because of good directions, photos, and delicious. He is so happy to have a little taste of home even when Amma is not visiting. I appreciate your site very much! Can’t wait to try out more recipes.
Thank you Nat! Very sweet of you to try out his favourite recipes which are not familiar to you 🙂 Keep cooking!
its looks yummy…. I have just completed marinating my chicken let’s see if it turns out to be as delicious as yours nags !!!!!!!
oh yay! please leave a comment with how it came out and also share a pic if you can 🙂
Hey nags
I tried it yipee!!!
The taste was good but mine was not that red and the chicken was not so smoked !!!
I baked it for 15 min with same temperature as you specified !!!
Any suggestions ??????
did you add red food colour? if so, add more for a deeper colour. oven temperatures vary a lot so it’s possible you needed more baking time. was the chicken cooked okay?
The chicken was cooked well. I kept it for 15 minutes at 450 F , but it did not have the the roasted taste of tandoor.