Tandoori paste can be used for tandoori chicken but also to marinate fish, vegetables, mushroom or even soya! The yogurt based spicy Indian aromatic paste is a time saver and a few spoonfuls will turn your dinner into the tandoori dish from your favorite Indian restaurant!
Get the tandoori paste recipe with the ingredients further below:
If you don’t know tandoori, you will need to catch up because it’s one of the worlds most favorite Indian foods. Chicken Tandoori made the tandoori flavors popular among the west and and east, and without it, Indian food would have not stepped across the borders.
To make a Tandoori dish is actually a lengthy period. How do I know this? Well, we prepared tandoori chicken, tikka and nan for a few years every single day. I can prepare tandoori in my sleep!
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We would buy freshly slaughtered chicken early mornings. The chickens would be young, light and without skin. Then the chicken was cut into main pieces with some cuts into the meat and the first marination would take place with turmeric, salt, chili and lemon juice.
A few hours later the second marination would be created, which is the main tandoori paste with spices and yogurt. The chicken would be coated with the tandoori paste and the meat would soak in it for at least 4 hours before the chicken pieces would bake in high heat in a special tandoori oven.
The tandoori paste itself is a 2 minutes job and what takes so long, is to keep the meat or vegetable to marinate for a while in the tandoori paste, so that they soak up all the gorgeous mouthwatering flavors that we all love.
So, you can use the tandoori paste for chicken, other white meats, fish, vegetables such as cauliflower, mushrooms and soya chunks. You can get a bit creative too. To give you an idea, I sprinkled some of the paste on a pizza before baking it the other day and the pizza tasted amazing!
You can prepare the tandoori paste from scratch whenever you need a fresh tandoori masala spice blend marination or you can freeze it too.
I freeze a batch and use it whenever I feel like tandoori flavors, because whenever you prepare a batch you will hardly require more then a few tablespoons full and you will be better off saving the rest for another day.
The tandoori paste is vegetarian, gluten-free, nut-free and without any artificial red food coloring. Tandoori chicken, for example, are usually deep red when sold commercially, which is because food coloring is added. You can add 1-2 drops of red food coloring if you want or paprika powder. I didn’t opt for the paprika powder in this recipe because paprika powder is hard to be found in India and very uncommon. Adding Paprika powder to make a red tandoori paste, wouldn’t be very Indian…
The base is yogurt and you can use whole spices if you want, to give the paste even more depth of flavors, by dry frying the whole spices first, cooling and grinding them in a small blender jar to a smooth powder or use a pestle and mortar and enjoy the aroma of your spices while smashing them gradually to powder.
Other MasalaHerb.com Videos
How to make Tandoori Masala Spice Mix Marination Video
Easy Tandoori Paste Recipe + Instructions to print
- 10 Tablespoon Greek style thick Yogurt or hung Curd (= 200 grams or 1 cup)
- 1 Teaspoon Turmeric Powder
- 1 Teaspoon Chili Powder
- ½ Teaspoon Black Pepper Powder
- 1½ Teaspoons Coriander Seed Powder
- 1½ Teaspoons Cumin Seed Powder
- ¼ Teaspoon Cinnamon Powder
- ¼ Teaspoon Cardamom Powder
- 1 Teaspoon Garam Masala
- ½ Teaspoon Chaat Masala (Optional)
- ¼ Teaspoon Clove Powder
- ½ Teaspoon Salt
- 1 Tablespoon Ginger Garlic Paste
- 1-2 Tablespoons fresh Coriander chopped
- 1 Teaspoon Oil
- Add the yogurt to the mixing bowl with the spices, ginger garlic paste, salt, chopped fresh Coriander (Cilantro) and oil. Mix to a smooth paste.
- Use directly to marinate chicken, vegetables, mushroom, seafood, fish, soya etc or freeze for another day.
Similar food dishes
Yogurt based Indian curries
- Chicken Korma
- Paneer Korma
- Vegetable Korma
Dear Reader, have you ever tried preparing your own tandoori dish?
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I adore tandoori! Thanks for sharing this delightful recipe. Time to raid my spice cupboard!
I love ❤️ a good tandoori. And it’s all starts with a good old tandoori paste. Homemade makes a huge difference. Isn’t it?
Yum! I love all the spices. Homemade is so much better. Love all of your tips.
Yummy! I love tandoori and this homemade paste is definitely being saved for another time!
I’m definitely pinning this. I love trying to make my own things like this, and it sounds like it would be a delicious addition to meats and rices.
I have trouble eating fish but no trouble at all with tandoori chicken, I haven’t made it at home but there’s a lovely Indian restaurant not far from here that makes wonderful tandoori chicken. Now I know what I’m going to have for dinner and it won’t take any work at all. 🙂
I need to try your recipe and make it at home.
Easy and yummy! Best combo ever. 🙂 Thanks!