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.
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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.