Tandoori chicken

Tandoori chicken is a South Asian dish of chicken marinated in yogurt and spices and roasted in a tandoor, a cylindrical clay oven. The dish is now popular world-wide. The modern form of the dish was popularized by the Moti Mahal restaurant in New Delhi in the late 1940s

Dishes similar to tandoori chicken may have existed during the Harappan civilization during the Bronze Age of India. According to the archeologist Professor Vasant Shinde, the earliest evidence for a dish similar to tandoori chicken can be found in the Harappan civilization and dates back to 3000 BC. His team has found ancient ovens at Harappan sites which are similar to the tandoors that are used in the state of Punjab. Physical remains of chicken bones with char marks have also been unearthed. Harappan houses had keyhole ovens with central pillars which was used for roasting meats and baking breads. Sushruta Samhita records meat being cooked in an oven (kandu) after marinating it in spices like black mustard (rai) powder and fragrant spices. According to Ahmed (2014), Harappan oven structures may have operated in a similar manner to the modern tandoors of the Punjab.

Tandoori chicken as a dish originated in the Punjab before the independence of partition of India. In the late 1940s, tandoori chicken was popularised at Moti Mahal in the locality of Daryaganj in New Delhi by Kundan Lal Jaggi and Kundan Lal Gujral, who were Punjabi Hindu migrants from Peshawar as well as the founders of the Moti Mahal restaurant. Mokha Singh had founded the restaurant in the Peshawar area of British India, which is now a part of neighbouring Pakistan.

In the United States, tandoori chicken began appearing on menus by the 1960s. Jacqueline Kennedy was reported to have eaten “chicken tandoori” on a flight from Rome to Bombay in 1962. A recipe for tandoori chicken was printed in the Los Angeles Times in 1963, for “the hostess in search of a fresh idea for a party dinner”; a similar recipe was featured in the same newspaper in 1964