Spicy Chicken Ghee Roast

Ghee is widely used in Indian cuisine. In olden days, making ghee is a big process. In those days almost every family have there own cows. After milking the cows they used to boil the milk. When the milk reaches the hand warm temperature,  they make yogurt from it. Then they churn the curd with a wooden whisk until butter separates from buttermilk.  They collect the butter for 3-4 days and then heat the butter to make ghee. But now a days store bought butter and ghee and the electric mixers made our cooking easy:-). While boiling ghee divine aroma will spread all over the place.

I usually use ghee to make sweets, for tempering and in some rice recipes. I never made chicken with ghee before. When I came to know about this Mangalorean spicy chicken ghee roast, I really want to give it a try. After tasting this delicious chicken, I added this to my favorite recipe list as it remembered me of my mom's chicken fry.

This recipe is very easy to prepare. Don't replace ghee with oil. If you want to cut the calories reduce the amount of ghee. If possible use chicken with bones and skin.
                
Ingredients:

• 1/2 kg or 1 lb Chicken
• 1/4 cup Curd
• 1/4 tsp Turmeric
• Juice of 1/2 Lemon
• 4 tsp Ghee
• 1/2 tsp sugar
• Salt to taste

 For Masala:

• 1 tsp Coriander seeds
• 1/2 tsp Pepper Corns
• 1/4 tsp Fenugreek seeds
• 1/2 tsp Fennel seeds 
• 1/2 tsp Cumin seeds
• 6-7 Garlic pods, sliced
• 8 Dry Red Chillies (adjust as per your taste)
• 2 Kashmiri chillies for color(optional)
• Small Marble size Tamarind

Preparation:

• Marinate chicken in curd, lemon juice and salt mixture for 4 hours.

• Dry roast all the ingredients under masala on low flame.
• First add coriander seeds, pepper corns and dry red chillies (these will take little bit more time to roast, so we have to roast them first). After 3 min add fenugreek seeds, cumin seeds, sliced garlic pods, tamarind and roast until nice aroma fills the room. Take care not to burn them.
• Let them cool and grind them into paste using little water.

Method:

• Heat ghee in a pan, add ground masala paste and fry for 5-6 min on medium heat until raw smell vanishes. Stir in between.

• Add the marinated chicken, sugar. Mix and cover with lid.
• Chicken oozes out water which is sufficient to cook chicken. Otherwise add 1/4 cup water. Stir in between.

• When chicken is 90 % done remove the lid and cook until chicken is done and there is no water.
• Serve with hot rice.

 Note:

•  I want to make it spicy so I used 8 red chillies, adjust as per your taste. You can also deseed them.