Chicken Tikka Masala

Chicken tikka masala is a dish consisting of roasted marinated chicken chunks (chicken tikka) in spiced curry sauce. The curry is usually creamy and orange-coloured. There are differing theories regarding the geographic origin of the dish, broadly split between those attributing it to cooks from South Asia living in Great Britain, and those that view it as first created on the Indian subcontinent. The dish is offered at restaurants around the world and was described by former UK foreign secretary Robin Cook as “a true British national dish.”

Composition

Chicken tikka masala is composed of chicken tikka, boneless chunks of chicken marinated in spices and yogurt that are roasted in an oven, served in a creamy curry sauce. A tomato and coriander sauce is common, but no recipe for chicken tikka masala is standard; a survey found that of 48 different recipes, the only common ingredient was chicken. The sauce usually includes tomatoes (frequently as purée), cream, coconut cream and a masala spice mix. The sauce and chicken pieces may be coloured orange using foodstuffs such as turmeric, paprika, tomato purée or with food dye.

The dish shares some similarity with butter chicken, both in the method of creation and appearance. The main difference is that chicken tikka masala uses a tomato gravy rather than a non-gravy sauce.

Origins

The origin of the dish is not certain. Some trace it to the South Asian community in Great Britain and others claim that it originated in the Indian subcontinent.

Chicken tikka masala may derive from butter chicken, a popular dish in northern India. Some observers have called chicken tikka masala the first widely accepted example of fusion cuisine. The Multicultural Handbook of Food, Nutrition and Dietetics credits its creation to Bangladeshi migrant chefs in the 1960s, after migrating to Britain from what was then East Pakistan (now Bangladesh). At the time, these migrant chefs developed and served a number of new inauthentic “Indian” dishes, including chicken tikka masala.

History

Historians of ethnic food, Peter and Colleen Grove, discuss multiple origin-claims of chicken tikka masala, concluding that the dish “was most certainly invented in Britain, probably by a Bangladeshi chef”. They suggest that “the shape of things to come may have been a recipe for Shahi Chicken Masala in Mrs Balbir Singh’s Indian Cookery published in 1961”.

Rahul Verma, a food critic who writes for The Hindu, said he first tasted the dish in 1971 and that its origins were in Punjab, India. He said, “It’s basically a Punjabi dish not more than 40–50 years old and must be an accidental discovery which has had periodical improvisations.”