I have some chicken marinating right now. With everything I have read I am going to cook it hot and fast - the marinade (yogurt based) is supposed to protect the chicken from 500-600 temp. If anyone has cooked this before did you use a place setter with legs up or just directly over the coals? Thanks
The pics will be interesting - the recipe calls for red food coloring. I figured we had some, but it turns out the girls picked neon colors with no red. I combined Neon Pink and Neon Purple - I can't wait to see how it looks.
My understanding is that "tandoor" is a clay oven in which the chicken is cooked at very high temperatures in the 700 degree range.
In that case I would think indirect with the plate setter would be the way to go.
Although not the same thing, I have cooked a whole 4lb chicken at 500 degrees on my MBGE with the plate setter legs down and the chicken on a trivet on the plate setter. I had iced the breast for about 40 minutes beforehand. The bird was done perfectly in one hour. The skin was bite-through and even the breast meat was exceptionally juicy.
I have wanted to try tandoori and am very interested in your cook. Please take a lot of pictures.
Well I would call this more of a learning session than anything. The fire never got hot - it stormed here last night. Even though the cooker was under cover, I guess the lump got wet. It was hard to light even though I added some fresh. I had two previous cooks and had no probelm getting her hot - I guess I did not have enough lump or it was wet. Anyway - the flavor was good, but the tenderness, texture had a lot to be desired - the outside cooked a lot faster than the inside. Live and learn.
I did not have any red food coloring, but my girls had Neon pink and Neon purple I mixed.
I tried tandoori chicken indirect on my BGE. It didn't come out as well as I had hoped. I'm going to try direct on a raised grid (trying to get some distance from the charcoal) next time. I'm also going to marinade longer next time. First time was 8 hours. I've read that not marinading long enough is a common mistake.
I think I would cook it indirect 400* dome, platesetter legs up with a drip pan for 45-60 minutes. Its been a while since I've used any Tandoori marinade, but anytime I grilled it would burn.
There is an interesting article worth reading on Wikipedia on the tandoor, part of which says:
"A tandoor is a cylindrical clay oven used in Transcaucasus, the Balkans, the Middle East, Central Asia, Pakistan, India and Bangladesh, in which food is cooked over a hot charcoal fire. Temperatures in a tandoor can approach 480°C (900°F), and it is common for tandoor ovens to remain lit for long periods of time to maintain the high cooking temperature. The tandoor design is something of a transitional form between a makeshift earth oven and the horizontal-plan masonry oven, and is used almost exclusively for live-fire, radiant heat cooking."
