Tandoori Chicken

Tandoori chicken is chicken marinated in yogurt and spices, roasted whole or in pieces at fierce heat until the skin blisters and chars. It is North India's signature roast, named for the tandoor — a deep clay oven that reaches temperatures well beyond a home oven's limit.

What it really is

Chicken, scored to let the marinade reach the meat, sits for hours (ideally overnight) in a thick coating of yogurt, ginger, garlic and garam masala, with a red spice — traditionally a mix leaning on paprika — giving it the dish's familiar deep red-orange colour. Skewered and lowered into the tandoor, it cooks fast at extremely high heat, so the outside chars and blisters in patches while the yogurt marinade keeps the meat inside from drying out.

The colour is not just for show. It signals which of the dish's two main components a guest is tasting first — the char and the marinade — and a pale version, however well marinated, hasn't gone through a genuinely hot tandoor.

How it is served

• On the bone, with charred, blistered skin, on a hot plate that keeps sizzling at the table.
• With a wedge of lime, sliced raw onion and mint chutney.
• As a starter in smaller pieces, or as a main course when served whole or as larger cuts.

How to write it on the menu

• Flag the dairy in the yogurt marinade.
• Say if it's cooked in a real charcoal-fired tandoor or a substitute oven, since the char and smoke genuinely differ.
• Note whether it's boneless or bone-in, since the two are different portions and different eating experiences.