How To Make Chicken Madras

Name: How To Make Chicken Madras
Prep time: 10 min
Cook time: 10 min
Total time: 20 min
Cuisine: British/Indian
Ingredients: 800g pre-cooked chicken; 2 tablespoon ghee or vegetable oil; 2 - 4 dried Kashmiri chillies; A few green cardamom pods; 1 tablespoon garlic paste; 1 tablespoon ginger paste; 1 tablespoon tomato paste; 2 green chilli peppers finely chopped; 1 tablespoon cumin powder; 1 tablespoon coriander powder; 1 - 2 tablespoons Madras curry powder; 1 teaspoon turmeric; 1 - 2 tablespoons red chilli powder; 750ml (3 cups) heated base curry sauce; 1 - 2 tablespoons mango chutney; salt and pepper to taste; Fresh coriander to garnish; A pinch of garam masala (Optional)

January 22, 2012 By Dan Toombs 131 Comments

Make the sauce for this spicy chicken Madras curry. You can substitute other meats and veggies too.

This is one awesome chicken madras curry!

When I first started writing my blog, the focus was on authentic Indian food. I wanted to perfect my Indian cooking skills and really know my stuff.

After about six months, however, people started commenting on my blog asking why their curries never tasted like they did at their favourite Indian restaurants. Curry house recipes were what they loved. They wanted to know how to cook takeaway style chicken Madras curry at home!

I had already learned a few recipes at the time from a good friend who worked in my local curry restaurant. I knew I needed to delve into this area of cooking a little deeper.

This chicken madras recipe came through visiting many Indian restaurant kitchens, taste tests and experimentation!

In my opinion it’s the best chicken madras out there. Judging from the popularity of this recipe on my blog, I think you just might agree.

How spicy will this chicken Madras curry be?

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 curry powder used was what made the difference between a chicken curry, a Madras which had about a tablespoon of chilli powder in it and a vindaloo which had three or four tablespoons of chilli.

Boring right? Over time, curry house chefs upped their game giving each of their curries their own characteristic flavour.

Mild chicken curries stayed about the same. Madras curries were flavoured with other ingredients seen often in southern Indian curries. Fresh green chillies were introduced for example and as in this recipe, a good dose of sweet mango chutney.

Vindaloos were made a lot more like the authentic Goan pork vindaloo. That said, pork wasn’t used as most curry houses are muslim run but they did add ingredients like vinegar and spicier fresh chillies to give their vindaloos. This gave them them a flavour that was different but equally as delicious to the Madras.

Madras curries are still medium heat curries where vindaloo will often give you a spicy kick to remember.

So that’s enough of all that! This chicken Madras curry is one of my all time curry house favourites. I hope you enjoy it too.

Enjoy!

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 all of your favourite curry house style curries in about ten minutes.

PRE-COOKED CHICKEN
I pre-cook chicken in two ways. Most restaurants use this 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 for extra flavour.

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

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.

Start by melting your ghee over medium high heat.

Add the whole spices and let them sizzle for about 40 seconds.

Now add the ground spices and the tomato paste and stir it all up to combine.

Add the cooked chicken and a little of the cooking juices.

To finish, Just add a squeeze of lime, the mango chutney and season with salt and pepper.

You can make this a day ahead. If fact it gets better. I often freeze mine for a later date too.

Give it a go! If you like chicken madras, this is a good one!

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