How To Make Chicken Madras

Sharing is caring!

 Chicken madras curry as it should be! This recipe gets restaurant quality results!

Slightly milder than a vindaloo and equally as delicious, if you like spicy curries, you’ll love this madras curry recipe. This is how chicken madras curry is made at the best curry houses.

I know because I have visited and cooked at so many of them! If you have my cookbook ‘The Curry Guy’ and/or ‘The Curry Guy Bible’, you might recognise the madras curry sauce. In the books I featured lamb madras curry to serve 4 people.

Here I have done it with chicken in a curry house portion to serve 1 – 2 people. 

You can make things easier on yourself!

This is a chicken madras curry recipe just like those you’ll find at curry houses. To make it, you will need to first prepare a base sauce and pre-cook your chicken.

It tastes amazing but if you would like to make a chicken madras curry without all the forward preparation, you could try my one pan version here.

About this chicken madras curry recipe…

Back in the early 90s when I moved to the UK, Indian food was a new cuisine for me. Chicken madras curry and also vindaloo were my favourites as I love spicy food.

In fact, it was my love of chicken madras curry that led me to starting my blog in the first place. The blog started as an authentic Indian food blog but before long I was receiving requests from readers to show how to make British Indian restaurant (BIR) style recipes.

Before long, I was right in the middle of the restaurant kitchens, learning the secrets behind curry house style curries like this chicken madras.

How spicy will this chicken Madras curry be?

On the heat scale, this chicken madras curry is just above a jalfrezi curry and slightly milder than a vindaloo.

That is when you order out but of course you can adjust the seasoning when you cook a chicken madras yourself. 

If you are not sure about the hot spices, simply reduce the amount you put in. It’s a lot easier to add spices at the end than it is to reduce the heat level once the spices have been added.

That’s the beauty of cooking for yourself… you can decide how spicy to make your curries. 

What is Madras curry?

Now let’s discuss what a Madras is. Back in the old days, you had three choices at British Indian restaurants, mild, spicy and very spicy.

The curries were all made the same way, just the amount of chilli powder used was what made the difference between a chicken curry, a chicken madras curry which had about a tablespoons of chilli powder in it and a vindaloo which had three or four tablespoons of chilli powder.

Boring right? Over time, curry house chefs upped their game giving each of their curries their own characteristic flavour. It’s for this reason that madras curries now have their own distinctive flavour.

What is the difference between a chicken madras curry and a vindaloo?

Vindaloos are now made a lot more like the authentic Goan pork vindaloo. That said, pork isn’t used at most curry houses because they are run by muslims. They do add ingredients like vinegar and spicier fresh chillies to give their vindaloos a flavour that is similar but usually spicier than an authentic vindaloo. This gave them them a flavour that was different but equally as delicious to the Madras.  

A chicken madras curry is just over medium heat where vindaloo will often give you a spicy kick to remember.

Preparing Ahead

Curry Sauce
All of the authentic British Indian restaurant (BIR) recipes on my blog call for a base curry sauce. Here’s my recipe. Once this is made, you will be able to make this chicken madras curry in about ten minutes.

PRE-COOKED CHICKEN
I pre-cook chicken in two ways for chicken madras curry. Most restaurants use this stewed method to prepare their chicken for this curry.

It’s slowly stewed in a spiced broth. The liquid from the resulting stock can be added to your chicken madras curry for extra flavour.

You could also add tandoori style chicken tikka to this recipe if you’d like to make a tandoori Chicken Madras curry.

For this recipe I used the slowly stewed version.

Do I have to use chicken?

Of course not! This Madras curry recipe is all about the sauce. Any meat, vegetables or paneer can be used as a main ingredient. For example, try this tandoori paneer. 

Following are step by step photographs of how to make a chicken madras.

Here are more curry house curry favourites you might like to try!

Chicken Korma
Chicken Dhansak
Lamb Rogan Josh
Chicken Tikka Masala
Lamb Vindaloo
Chicken Chilli Garlic
Chicken Patia
Lamb Bhuna

 

 

 

I hope you enjoy this chicken Madras curry recipe! If you do give it a try, please don’t be a stranger. Let me know in the comments. I’d love to hear from you.