Achari Chicken is a tangy chicken curry made using a special blend of spices to give it a flavour profile characteristic of the pickles eaten across the Pakistani and Indian regions. It’s the same blend used in my Achari Aloo recipe and you can use this to spice anything, from meat to vegetables to even lentils!
🔪 How to make Achari Chicken
My recipe starts of with making the special achari spice mixture. Either in a grinder or a pestle and mortar, grind the following spices: nigella seeds (kalonji), fennel seeds (saunf), cumin seeds (zeera) and black mustard seeds (rai). The exact ratio is in the recipe card below. In a bowl, mix together yogurt with the spice mixture we just made alongside salt, coriander powder, turmeric, green chilli paste, ginger paste and garlic paste. Allow this to sit in the fridge for a minimum of 4 hours and a maximum of 24 hours, to allow the flavours to penetrate deep into the chicken. When you’re ready to start cooking, heat up some oil in a deep pot or pan. Add in diced onions and sautĂ© this over a medium to high heat, until the onions turn dark brown. Add in the marinated chicken mixture. SautĂ© this on a high heat, until the chicken is no longer pink and until the mixture all looks quite dry. Add in tomato concentrate and ½ cup of water. You may also use tomatoes instead of tomato concentrate - you’ll only need to add about â…› cup of water in this case (but keep an eye out and add more water if it looks extra dry!) Cover and cook everything on low for 25 minutes. As the chicken is cooking, you can prepare the green chillies. This step is optional but it really elevates any Achari dish - many authentic recipes will have these stuffed chillies in them. Mix together lemon juice and chaat masala. If you don’t have chaat masala, you can alternately make some more of the achari spice mix we made earlier and use that here. Set this mixture aside. Take some juicy, fat green chillies and use a knife to pierce a slit lengthwise down one side of the chilli. Using your fingers, apply pressure to the top and bottom of the chilli - this should open up the slit without damaging the chilli. Spoon in 2-3 teaspoon of the lemon juice mixture into the slit, then release and set aside. Once the chicken cook time is up, take the lid off and add in the green chillies. Cover again and continue to cook everything for 5 additional minutes on a low heat. Your Achari Chicken is ready! Garnish with fresh coriander and serve hot.
đź’ Extra tips and substitutions
You can make this using boneless chicken too - use the same weight as stated in the recipe. Similarly, you can also make this using minced/ground meat too. Again, same weight as stated in the recipe. If you would like to cook this using beef or lamb (this is called Achar Gosht), add an additional 1-1.5 cup of water when called for in the recipe and cook the curry for an additional 1-1.5 hours). You can create a larger batch of the Achari spice mix and use it to spice a variety of vegetable dishes, such as Bhindi, Aloo Gobi, Aloo Baingan. Just cook these dishes how you usually would, and just spice them using the Achari spice mix. Achari Chicken tastes great the next day, as the flavours get a chance to deepen and develop! The green chilli element of this dish is optional. If you don’t like them, you are free to omit them. Also, you don’t need to stuff the green chillies with chaat masala and lemon juice. You can just add in the green chillies as they are into the curry and that will taste great too! A fine dice for the onions is best, otherwise you may find large bits of onion in the curry and this doesn’t suit this dish well. If you want, you can purĂ©e the onions before using them in the curry but you will need to allow time for all the water to evaporate before the onions will brown. Similarly, if you use fresh tomatoes in this recipe, please dice them finely or blend them into a purĂ©e. I personally prefer tomato purĂ©e concentrate in this recipe because of the beautiful red hue it gives the curry. You can easily reduce the oil in this recipe if you so prefer by up to half. Achari Chicken is best served with a flatbread sort of accompaniment - think roti, naan, parathas!
đź“‹ Recipe
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title: “Achari Chicken” ShowToc: true date: “2024-09-25” author: “Johnny Hernandes”
Achari Chicken is a North Indian / Pakistani Chicken tomato and onion-based curry spiced with a pickling spice mix also called “Achari Masala. The use of yogurt and aromatic pickling spices like mustard, fenugreek, fennel, and nigella gives it a unique taste and makes it stand out in other chicken curry recipes. It is also called achari murgh in Punjabi.
IngredientsÂ
I have divided the ingredients in two images, one is of achari masala that can be made in advance and doubled or tripled if you make this curry often. The second image has ingredients for chicken that you’d need at the time of cooking. Moreover, the spice mix when cooked in mustard oil will send you to the fields of Punjab with the same rustic feel and wholesome food. Make it in a wok and you’d love that extra bhuna Karahi flavor. The ingredients of achari masala or spice mix are dried fenugreek leaves, Kashmiri red chilies, chili flakes, salt, coriander, cumin, and fennel seeds. Fenugreek leaves and fennel seeds are slightly uncommon ingredients in this list. You can easily get these in Indian stores. I recommend not skipping these as they are essential for the achari flavour. The ingredients to make achari chicken are Because you don’t crush these seeds and we use the same masala to fill in the large green chilies. And these seeds taste somewhat bitter in chilies. If skipping the chili step then you add these seeds to the achari spice mix directly.
Oil: Authentically mustard oil is used, but any neutral vegetable oil or grape seed oil will do. Chicken: Bone-in chicken pieces or chicken drumsticks taste great in the curry as bones release natural juices to enhance the taste. For the boneless chicken version use chicken thigh pieces. Onion: Use purple or pink onion. Tomato: I used 3 fresh tomatoes and simply blended them to make the smooth puree. Ginger, garlic, chili: I prefer minced, the paste is fine too. Big chilies: I used the big dark green chilies which are less spicy. Look for something similar. If eating chilies is not your thing, skip this step altogether. Lemon juice: I used lemon juice to mix in the masala for chilies, authentically, amchor powder (raw mango powder) is used. Yogurt: I used Indian slightly sour yogurt, if using Greek yogurt use less. Brown sugar: This ingredient adds the fermented sweetness of a pickle to the curry. Substitute this with jaggery powder. You can skip this too. Seeds: I used mustard, nigella, and fenugreek. You skip any of these seeds if not available.
How to make it?
To make achari chicken start by making the spice mix. Hungry for chicken curries? Try these! Use less spicy large chilies to fill the Achari masala and let them steam well to soften before serving. This help to reduce the heat of chilies. If you love to make Achari chicken often, consider doubling or tripling the spice mix and storing extra spice mix in the fridge to be used later. Serve the chicken with plain basmati rice or naan for the best taste. You can make this curry 1 day ahead in planning for a gathering or dawat. If you try this Achari Chicken curry recipe, I’d LOVE to hear your feedback in the comments. Your 5-ratings motivate me to do my best. Stay connected for more recipes and videos on Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and Youtube.
đź“– Recipe
