Skip Takeout—Homemade Chicken Curry Is Easier Than You May Think

Delish

Looking for an easy, weeknight-friendly curry? This chicken curry is IT. It’s rich, saucy, perfectly spiced, and comes together in less than an hour.

Transcript

00:00What's up, y'all? It's Brooke in the Delish Kitchen studios,

00:02getting ready to make a flavor-packed, cozy winter staple, chicken curry.

00:07Curries come in a lot of different forms,

00:09but they're usually attributed to the cuisine of Southeast Asia,

00:12particularly India and Thailand.

00:14When it comes to curries like the one we're making today,

00:17they're actually a little bit more British than they are Indian.

00:20British curries are flavored with curry powder,

00:22which is something that was actually created in Britain.

00:25It wasn't created in India.

00:26British curries are typically a little bit thicker and sweeter

00:29than curries that you would actually find if you were in India or Thailand.

00:32So that's what separates British curries from Indian curries.

00:36So just know that this one is leaning a little bit more on the British side.

00:39It's a little bit thicker,

00:40but it does have some of that tomato-y sourness that you would find in an Indian curry.

00:44The reason the Brits have such an affinity for curries and other Indian-flavored things

00:48is because they colonized India in the 1800s.

00:52So a lot of those flavors and spices became really common with British cuisine.

00:56To get started on the base for this curry sauce,

00:58we're going to blend some onions in the food processor until they turn into an onion puree.

01:03Then we're going to dump that out and add some chopped jalapenos,

01:06a little bit of chopped ginger, and eight cloves of garlic.

01:10We're going to do the same thing we did with the onion and just blend that up.

01:13And that's where the sauce will get most of the flavor from.

01:15To help the jalapeno, garlic, and ginger to form into a sauce,

01:19we're going to add a half a cup of water just to keep everything moving in the food processor.

01:23We've got our aromatics all blended up and ready to go.

01:26So we're ready to start building the base of the curry sauce.

01:29It's very simple.

01:30Other than the aromatic ingredients, we just have a little bit of curry powder

01:34that we're going to toast in some oil just so it can get nice and fragrant

01:38and really have that flavor penetrate the sauce.

01:41Once you've got your onion puree in the pot with that toasted curry powder

01:45and a little pinch of salt, you're going to let this cook down for about five minutes

01:48until it loses a lot of that liquid that came out

01:51when we were blending the onions in the food processor.

01:54You want this to sort of look like an onion paste before you start adding the blended jalapeno.

01:58Then we're going to add our jalapeno mixture, a little bit of salt, and some tomato paste.

02:04We're going to cook all that down until the tomato paste starts to turn a really deep red

02:09and then it's time to blend the sauce one more time.

02:14Oh my goodness, this smells so incredibly good.

02:18To finish this sauce, the last step is to put it back in the food processor

02:22with some tomato puree and a little bit of whole milk yogurt.

02:26That's going to help fortify the sauce a little bit to make it nice and rich and creamy.

02:30I got this sauce for our chicken curry all blended up in a food processor.

02:34As you can see, it's pretty blended, but there's still some chunks to it.

02:38Working with a food processor, you'll probably always have a couple of chunks.

02:42So since I want to get this super duper, super duper smooth, I'm going to turn to my Vitamix.

02:49I'm going to blend the sauce up in there until I can get it as smooth as humanly possible.

02:53Y'all, that Vitamix is the truth.

02:56It definitely did the trick to get this sauce a lot smoother.

02:59And again, chunky sauce isn't necessarily a bad thing.

03:02I just prefer the mouthfeel of a slightly smoother sauce.

03:04Next thing we got to do with this sauce is return it to our pot.

03:08We're going to add a cup of water to it and bring it to a simmer.

03:11For chicken curry, dark meat is going to be your best bet.

03:14We went with a boneless, skinless chicken thigh this time.

03:17We went with boneless because boneless is just easier to work with,

03:20although bone-in does tend to have a little bit more flavor.

03:22It's not really the kind of difference that you would actually notice

03:25in a sauce that already has this much flavor.

03:28Another thing, dark meat won't overcook and become really, really tough.

03:31It's super forgiving.

03:32So even if you let it go for a little bit longer than the 20 minutes it's going to take

03:36to cook in this sauce, you won't notice.

03:38It's not going to be super tough and super chewy.

03:40So do yourself a favor and go with dark meat.

03:43We're going to season this chicken with a little bit of salt on both sides.

03:47Then we're going to add it to our pot of simmering curry sauce

03:50and let it cook for about 20 minutes or until it's completely cooked through.

03:53If you're using an instant read thermometer,

03:55it should register at least 165 degrees for the chicken thigh to be totally cooked.

04:00Once we're done with that, we're going to sprinkle in that garam masala

04:04and bust out some steamed rice and this will be pretty much ready to go.

04:07It is so unbelievably fragrant in here.

04:11All those spices and aromatics that we used in that sauce.

04:13And I can smell the curry powder.

04:15It just smells like a warm pot of coziness.

04:21Oh, wait.

04:22Oh, no.

04:23The cilantro.

04:26I was moving a little too hastily

04:28and I forgot to top this with a little bit of fresh cilantro

04:31just to add a little bit of brightness.

04:34Oh, that was a close one.

04:37Okay, now it's time to try.

04:41Mm-hmm.

04:47That chicken thigh is so, so tender in the sauce.

04:54It's so packed with flavor.

04:56This is like a symphony of different flavors that are packed into this curry sauce.

05:00I mean, I can taste a little bit of everything.

05:02I get the onion, I get the jalapeno, the ginger, the garlic, that curry powder, of course.

05:08This is the kind of thing I could eat over and over and over and over and over and over again.

05:12And honestly, that jalapeno gave this the perfect level of heat.

05:16You could definitely make it spicier if you're more of a fan of spicy curry,

05:19but this is a very good place to start.

05:22And it's a crowd-pleaser.

05:23If you want more crowd-pleasing and cozy recipes just like this one,

05:26keep it right here at Delish.com.

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