Daddy’s Chicken Curry – in 10 steps
While my mom is the more talented, experienced cook in our family, my dad enjoys some basic cooking, and cooks much more in his retired years. He’s a particular fan of quick recipes with few ingredients. He is a retired engineer, so he loves method and precision — if a recipe says 1/4 teaspoon of salt he will measure it exactly as instructed. Improvisation is not in his vocabulary.
One dish Daddy makes often is his chicken curry. It’s so simple. It’s so easy. It’s so satisfying. And, the funny thing is, we never seem to grow tired of it. It’s a dish I make at least once a month at home in New York. Whenever we visit Canada, and mom & dad ask us what we want for dinner upon arrival, it’s the one dish we request. Every time. And somehow, it always tastes better when Daddy makes it.
Daddy’s Chicken Curry — in 10 steps
Serves 4
Ingredients
- 2 medium onions, chopped
- 4 cloves of garlic, finely minced
- 1-inch piece of fresh ginger root, peeled and finely minced
- 1-1.5 pounds skinless, boneless chicken thighs (usually it’s one package; if you can’t find boneless, using bone-in chicken thighs are just fine)
- 1 tablespoon canola oil (don’t use olive oil unless you don’t have anything else on hand)
- 1/2 teaspoon dry red chilli flakes
- ¾ teaspoon coriander powder
- ½ teaspoon cumin powder
- ½ teaspoon garam masala
- ¼ teaspoon turmeric
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 2 tablespoons tomato paste (I like Muir Glen’s organic tomato paste)
- A generous handful of small red potatoes cut in half or fingerling potatoes (totally optional)
- 1.5 cups of water (just enough to cover the chicken)
- 1/4 cup freshly chopped cilantro (for garnish before serving)
Preparation
- Assemble all your ingredients i) fresh aromatics (onions, garlic, ginger) and spices ii) chicken and iii) potatoes if you’re using them (the curry is just as great without the potatoes, so don’t worry if you don’t have them)
- Heat oil in a deep, wide skillet on medium to medium-high heat. Add the dry red chilli flakes right away–when they start to move a little, you will know the oil is ready! (a tip that has saved me many, many times)
- Add the onions, garlic, and ginger (yes, all at once), and sauté onions until golden (you don’t need to worry about browning them or caramelizing them–they just need to become golden and glassy).
- Add the chicken thighs, one side down. Let them brown on one side (say 1-2 minutes), then turn each piece over and do the other side.
- Add the cumin, coriander, garam masala, turmeric, and salt, and mix well to coat, so the onions, garlic, ginger, chicken, and dry spices are all happy together. Then add the tomato paste and combine until well mixed.
- Drop the potatoes in.
- Add water, mix everything together gently, and cover, increasing the heat slightly. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat to minimum and simmer for 30 minutes.
- Top with fresh cilantro.
- Stand back and behold your creation!
- Dig in and eat. Most important step of all.
When you begin to heat the oil over medium-high heat, add the red chilli flakes to the oil right away. Once they start to move you’ll know it’s time to add the onions, garlic, and ginger (all at once). You want them to be glassy like this, which shouldn’t take more than a couple of minutes.
Be sure to spread the chicken thighs evenly in your skillet or pan, embedded among the onions, garlic, ginger, and red chilli flakes.
Combine spices well before adding tomato paste and water
Drop in potatoes here and there, wherever you like. Use the smallest, cutest potatoes you can find, and keep the skins on. If they’re a little big, like small red potatoes, cut them in half.
After 30 min this is how your curry should look. Golden, glistening, and robust with flavors. In only 30 minutes the aromatics have melded with the tomato and ground spices, blending beautifully with the chicken and potatoes.
You can eat it in a casual soup bowl in front of the t.v. or you can go fancy and elegant, for a Saturday evening dinner party! Your friends will be impressed.
Hi, I tried making this but the dish had most of it’s water remaining by the end, compared to almlst none in your picture, was i not supposed to cover it while simmering?
Your website is fantastic, an online Indian Cooking for Dummies. I have used cookbooks, web recipes and YouTube, but all my Indian dishes were lousy.
Then your website came along explaining the fundamentals, making it so much easier to do. I made the chicken curry last night and it was delicious, and even better today.
Now that someone has finally revealed all the secrets, I know all my future Indian cooking adventures will be delicious.
Thanks so much!
Leslie, thank you for such a wonderful comment! My goal is to show folks how easy it is to add Indian dishes to their weekly dinner rotation using ingredients from any grocery store. Moreover, very few people fully understand the rhyme and reason behind Indian cuisine and how to make sense of it in simple ways. I make this chicken curry regularly at home — the best thing is that now that you’ve made it, you already have many spices you can use to make many other dishes! Happy cooking!
i love this recipe! Tried it tonight but honestly I was a bit hesitant at first because I thought this recipe will be as intense and spicy as the one I usually get from Indian restaurants. But to my surprise, the flavor is well balanced and mild. And so delicious! To add to that, this recipe is simple and easy to make – with ingredients that you usually have in your pantry plus just a few addition of spices. Maybe next time il try to play around with the spices. A great recipe for beginners like me, and a great way to learn basic spices and how they taste. Thanks a lot for sharing this one. Hope to find more simple and easy recipes for beginners to Indian cooking! Keep it up!
Dear Moca! Congrats for not letting hesitancy stand in your way! You are so right, there is a big difference between Indian restaurant cooking and home cooking — the best thing is you can always adjust the heat or intensity to suit your taste exactly, if you have the basic spices at home. Daddy’s Chicken Curry is still something Sean and I make every week, we never get tired of it! Please keep cooking and let us know what you end up making! If you have questions just say the word!
Hi.. What if i don’t have the powder version of the ingredients? for example I have cumin seeds but i don’t have cumin powder.. can I substitute the cumin seeds instead?
Hello Moca! Great to hear from you! You can absolutely use cumin seeds, just add 1/2 teaspoon of cumin seeds at the beginning when you add the red chilli flakes, then proceed with the recipe as normal. When you add whole spices (cumin seeds as opposed to ground cumin powder) they need to be tempered for a longer time in the oil, hence we add them at the start instead of later. When you add the tomato paste and ground spices, be sure to turn down the heat a little (you can turn it back up later) to ensure it doesn’t burn. I can’t wait to hear how it turns out!
Thanks a lot!! I will try this recipe again today but using cumin seeds. Thank you for your help!
A good recipe creates preference; a great one inspires behavior change. This is a great one.
Whenever I craved good Indian food, I used to order because it was such a fuss to make it myself. This recipe shifted my mindset. Not only was it easy, it has all the most common ingredients for an awesome Indian meal. That means I buy turmeric and garam masala once, and I can use them here and any other great Indian dishes featured on this blog. If you dissect the steps down and try to understand the sequence, this recipe also teaches you quite a bit about the way flavors and colors are created. it was therefore a really good way to improve my skills, which in turn makes cooking that much more effortless.
The results: a crowd-pleaser. The flavor profile of this recipe is very well balanced, mild. And after having cooked it 3 times, my wife and I have tweaked the amount of garam masala and chili to make it more fiery because I love spicy food. Overall, it’s a great place to start if you are timid like me in trying to cook a new cuisine. You’ll be surprised how easy, delicious, and tweakable this recipe is. Try it!
Dear Duncan! You made my day! This is exactly why I started Big Apple Curry — to encourage folks to make simple, delicious Indian food at home, which frankly, can be more flavorful and healthy than your standard Indian restaurant/take-out dishes. Just as you say, an added bonus is that you can tweak a recipe to suit your own tastes or preferences! You’ve clearly cracked the code when it comes to getting comfortable about making Indian food yourself — stocking up on a few basic spices and herbs will enable you to make many different dishes. I’m thrilled you’ve made Daddy’s Chicken Curry now 3 times — my dad won’t believe it when I tell him!
I’m thrilled to say that I’ve now cooked this recipe three times! I was so encouraged by how delicious it was the first time (which was my first time cooking Indian) – I kept making it again, each time adding ingredients that I had been missing. Each time it was more and more delicious. Thank you for sharing such a delight! I can’t wait to explore and experiment with more recipes.
Fantastic! Brava for taking the leap to make an Indian dish even if you didn’t have all the ingredients the first time. That’s a great way to start to learn anything new. Now that you have all the basic spices in your cupboard, you can make a wide variety of dishes!