Yogurt Marinated Chicken – Everybody out of Cupboard/Roll-call

When chicken goes on sale, I like to make a yogurt marinated chicken.

It’s sort of like tandoori or butter chicken, only I don’t use garam masala in the spice blend – mostly because garam masala as a mix is to expensive for me to buy when I’ll only use it once every 3 months, and the other is because it has cinnamon in it and it’s something that my taste buds can’t stand, and other spices that I can’t really taste. That being said, it’s cheaper to make your own mix and there’s plenty of recipes for that online elsewhere.

I call it Everybody out of the Cupboard, or Cupboard Roll-call because it uses all the odd spices that I normally don’t use very much. It’s a great way to use them up, because buying spices at the grocery store is generally a case of -this will expire/go bad/go stale before I use it all- and they can sit in the cupboard for years. What about a bulk food store you say? Public transit, it takes a minimum 3-4 hours roundtrip to get to it, too much a hassle. People clean out their fridges and pantries before things can go off, but never think to do the same to their spice cabinet/drawers.

1. Chicken Breasts – sliced into strips or 1″ chunks, your preference.
   2-3 breasts for these quantities. If doing more, increase your yogurt & lemon juice.
2. 1 cup yogurt – preferably plain, greek style, but I skim the top half of one of those fruit on the bottom types and it works fine enough for me. Vanilla also works.
3. 1 small can/6 tbsp tomato paste
4. 1/4 cup lemon juice – bottled is fine, I can’t afford fresh
5. 1 tsp each of the following spices

• ground ginger
• garlic salt
• ground cumin
• ground tumeric
• cayenne powder
• onion powder
• dry mustard – also known as mustard powder, dry mustard powder, hot mustard powder
• salt
• ground/cracked black pepper

For a more ‘authentic’ taste, you can add ground coriander, ground cardamom, ground cinnamon, ground cloves & ground nutmeg. Together with ground black pepper & ground cumin makes the garam masala mix.

Any spice that isn’t in the thyme/basil/sage etc category can go in the mix really.

1. Throw everything into a ziplock bag and mix together, then refrigerate at least 4 hours but preferably overnight.
2. Grease a baking/casserole dish, then dump in everything from the ziplock bag, including the extra marinade.
3. Cook @ 350 in the oven for 1 1/2 hours. You might need extra time if you’ve added more chicken and depending on the thickness of your chicken.

You could figure out how to adapt it to the IPot, but I’ve tried it a couple different ways and using the Seal Lock when cooking makes an ungodly mess, and without the Seal Lock it takes the same amount of time as it does in the oven, or even longer using the slow cook method.

Serve over rice or your favourite grain/starch, or use as the meat in tacos or pita wraps. I was forced to make a lettuce bowl – it’s there at the bottom, because I tried a cheap brand of pita wraps and they were too flimsy to make a wrap/burrito.

 

For those daring, you can increase the yogurt and lemon juice for volume and even do a whole chicken(either whole or split the spine to spread it out), marinate overnight and then roast it in the oven.

Don’t like using a ziplock bag because it’s plastic/wasteful? That’s fine. You could even marinate it in your baking dish as long as you include 1/4 cup of oil but I find that sometimes the parts on top don’t get marinated enough. Just don’t use a plastic tub container because it’ll ruin the plastic – spaghetti sauce ring like ruin it.