On slow flame take a fry-pan and add 5-6 cardamom black and green, 2 tbsp coriander seeds, 1 mace flower, 2 tbsp black pepper corns, 1 tbsp cumin, 2-3 cloves. When it comes to non-veg the most essential ingredients are cardamom, coriander and ginger, others are just fillers. They do have their own characteristic taste but you can make do without them if you have the essential three. Don’t roast them too much as the aim is just to dry them, So that when it gets cooked along with chicken the taste will blend in. If you wish add a pinch of salt. You can also add red chili but it is not compulsory unless you crave for a bit of spice. After that mash them into crude or fine powder as you see fit.

Take 4 large sized or 6 medium sized onions and chop them into thin half-moon slices, separate them into individual pieces. Take a 1.5-inch ginger and cut them into small diced pieces. After that do the same thing with 6-7 cloves of garlic, 2 medium sized tomatoes and 2 green chilies. You can also take ginger-garlic paste but as this is a classic chicken curry, we can make wherever we are if we just have a knife, kadhai/Wok, Spatula, our ingredients and a fire source. This classic chicken curry requires no extra equipments or instruments. Take some coriander leaves and chop them to fine pieces. As for our chicken you can buy only leg pieces or breast and leg curry pieces.

Now let’s get started with cooking. Put a Kadhai or wok on medium flame. Let the kadhai warm up a little, to it add 3 tbsp refined oil or mustard oil for better smell. To the oil add 1 tsp cumin, 1 black cardamom. Let the jeera become a bit crisp otherwise we may find it as a whole at the end of our dish. After cumin becomes crisp add our onion slices and mix them until oil coats the onions thoroughly. Fry the onions on medium flame until they turn light golden brown. Always remember the taste of a curry depends how expertly the onion is fried and the goal is to make them golden brown evenly and we can achieve that by frying the onions at low to medium flame for a longer period rather than fry them at high flame for a shorter duration, it all depends on your control. Now to the fried onions add our chopped ginger-garlic and fry them until the raw smell of onion and garlic goes away. After that to the fried-mix add 1 tsp turmeric powder, 1 tbsp red chili powder or half it if you don’t like spiciness, 1 tsp coriander powder, salt as per taste and our garam masala mix that we previously prepared. Fry them for 1 minute at low flame. Now another secret, most people after this step would tell you to add chicken but never do that because the dry powders and fried onion, ginger and garlic which are also dry after being fried will suck the water from chickens and after being cooked they won’t taste or feel juicy at all. Here the next step is to add ¼ cup water and mix the masala thoroughly so that the dry masala mix can suck in all the water. Cover and cook it for 2 minutes. Now after this step we shall add our chicken and mix them thoroughly until masala gets coated evenly around the chicken. Cook the chicken with lid on until water stops coming out of chicken and oil starts separating from the masala. Add the finely chopped coriander leaves (1 tbsp) and water in the pot as per your need, cover it with lid, bring it to a boil and cook it for 15 minutes. After that stop the flame and leave it with lid off to cool down and the chicken to take shape. Now serve and enjoy. Thanks for reading, have a tasty day.

Photo by amirali mirhashemian on Unsplash