Chicken Bhuna Masala, blissfully delicious

Introduction

Chicken Bhuna is a curry that you will make every week. it’s a foundation dish to any Pakistani home. This is actually the first curry that my mum taught me to cook. When I say taught me, I forced her to teach me how to cook in the last couple of months before I was going to get married! The base of this curry is classic and is utilised in many other curry dishes. I am still making this recipe many years later, with the addition on the odd tweak here and there.

Variations to making chicken bhuna

You can not go too far wrong when using this masala base. You could quite easily throw in any other chicken you prefer, for example chicken on the bone or mince meat. I tend to use chicken breast, it cooks quickly, if using on the bone you will need to cook it for a few minutes longer. As I am using cooking chicken breast, this is a great curry for the kids. There’s no fussing about taking the chicken off the bone and they can practice making their bhorki’s (making bite size mouthful’s with their fingers using roti/naan)!

Key ingredients

Similar to most curry’s a good bhuna must have onions, tomatoes, garlic and ginger. You really can not beat using fresh ingredients, rather than garlic and ginger pastes that you can pick up in jars at your South Asian Supermarkets. Using fresh tomatoes also works better in this dish rather than tinned tomatoes. In some way a chicken bhuna is quite similar to a chicken karai. However the key difference between the chicken bhuna and chicken karai is the use of onions. This is what separates the two dishes.

Chicken bhuna is very versatile. I also throw in a tin of chickpeas after I have browned the chicken for the days I want to vary the curry, or even a green capsicum/ green bell pepper for a bit of crunch and texture.

History of chicken bhuna

Chicken Bhuna originates from South Asian, specifically Northern India and Pakistan. Bhuna means to fry, here the onions are fried as traditionally done with most curry’s. Also the chicken is fried in the masala base.

The curry is traditionally dry, similar to my namkeen lamb or chicken karahi, so it works very well being served with naan or chapati’s. I personally would never serve chicken bhuna with rice due to it being a dry curry. However if you really like your curry’s with rice, make sure you serve it with some chutney or boondi.

Conclusion

Like most curry’s once we see the oil separate from the masala, you know it’s done and ready to eat. As the curry is dry, we will be adding minimal amounts of water when cooking, the water added is just to make sure nothing sticks to the pan and burns. The cooking time is 35 minutes, however most of this time is just letting the curry simmer away. It’s really not a hard graft curry to whip up this curry, especially as a weeknight dinner. If you have pre chopped your garlic and ginger (I sometimes do a large batch and keep it in an airtight container in the fridge), and fresh coriander ( I usually have some in the freezer in a freezer bag), you can reduce the preparation time for the curry too.

See my video on Youtube, Instagram or TikTok to see how to make this dish. You will see that the water I used in the video has a residue of chopped tomatoes. In an effort not to be wasteful with food, I rinsed the food processor bowl with water after the tomatoes and green chillies had been added to the pan. That was the water I used to add back into the curry. I do like to try and not be wasteful in every part of the cooking process.

Ingredients

Time: Preparation 7 minutes, Cooking 35 minutes

• 4 tbsp olive oil
• 2 medium onions, finely chopped
• 2 tsp garlic, finely chopped
• 2 tsp ginger, finely chopped
• 3 medium tomatoes, finely chopped
• 2 green chillies, finely chopped
• 0.5 tsp turmeric
• 2 tsp ground coriander
• 2 tsp cumin powder
• 1.5 tsp salt (to taste)
• 0.30 tsp red chilli powder (to taste)
• 0.50 tsp black pepper powder
• 600 grams boneless chicken (or on the bone, to your preference)
• 1 tsp garam masala powder
• 2 tbsp natural yoghurt
• 1 tsp lemon juice
• handful of fresh coriander, finely chopped (garnish)

Method

• Add the oil to a saucepan and heat. Then add the onions and brown until dark brown. This should take around 10 minutes.
• Add the garlic and ginger and stir through until the raw smell has gone.
• Then add the tomatoes, green chillies, turmeric, ground coriander, cumin powder, salt and red chilli powder, black pepper powder to the pan, add 150ml of water and let the mixture simmer for 10 minutes on a low to medium heat.
• Then add the chicken to the pan and brown, turn the heat up to medium for browning the chicken, Then turn the heat down and add a splash of water, then cover the pan with the lid and let it cook for 15 minutes (if cooking with chicken on the bone, cook for 20-30 minutes) . Keep checking the pan and stir the chicken through to ensure it does not burn. You may need to add a splash of water if the chicken is sticking to the base of the pan. After this time you should see the oil separating from the masala. This is when you know the curry is ready.
• Finally add the garam masala, natural yoghurt and lemon juice and stir through and simmer for a minute or so.
• Finish with fresh coriander and serve with chapati or naans.