Achari Murg (Tangy, spicy, chicken curry)

Hi everyone! I wrote this post some days ago.. then I don’t know which keyboard buttons I hit accidentally, the entire text got deleted and before I could undo that, in less than a second… blogger auto-saved the post that way!! Oh my.. was I frustrated!! A whole post accidentally deleted!!! I searched.. but I could find no way to recover the text! It took me a while to get it all written again. Fortunately this recipe is worth re-writing many times.. just had to find the time. :)

Fig. 1. Achari Chicken

We had tasted a delicious non-vegetarian pickle with a very distinctive North-East Indian flavor a while back. Since then I have been on the look-out for such a pickle. I recently spotted this Achaari Murg recipe at Soma’s blog, Ecurry. This is not a chicken pickle really, it is a chicken curry. But the spices used lend a very clear north-east touch to the recipe. So I thought it would be a good idea to try out this dish and then maybe adapt the recipe in future to make chicken pickle.

I have cut down Soma’s recipe to 1/3rd of the quantity.  I did not have mustard oil. So I substituted the mustard oil with normal vegetable oil and some extra powdered mustard. I don’t know if that is a good enough substitution, but the dish turned out really terrific. So I am ok with this version. ;)

Ingredients:
Chicken pieces – 1 pound
Yogurt – 2 or 3 tablespoons
Turmeric (Haldi) powder – ¾ teaspoon
Mustard oil 2 table spoons + vegetable oil 4 tablespoons. (I used 4 table spoons of canola oil + 2 teaspoons of ground mustard powder
Onions – 2, peeled, finely chopped
Garlic – 3 large cloves
Ginger – 1 medium piece finely chopped, or 1 tablespoon of paste
Tomatoes – 2 medium, finely chopped
Red chili powder – 1 teaspoon
Salt – to taste

Dry Spices: Dry roast and grind into a powder. 
Red Chili flakes – 1 tablespoon
Mustard seeds – 3/4 teaspoon
Fenugreek (Methi) seeds – ½ teaspoon
Cumin seeds (jeera) – 1/3 teaspoon
Fennel seeds (saunf) – 1 teaspoon
Nigella sativa (Kalonji) – ¾ teaspoon
Cinnamon – 1 small 1 inch stick
Cloves – 2

Procedure
1) Marinate chicken pieces with yogurt, salt and haldi.
2) Dry roast and grind the spices mentioned in the “dry spices” section to make masala powder. (Can make in slightly larger quantity and store for future use.)
3) Heat mustard oil + vegetable oil (or vegetable oil + add mustard powder, whatever you may have chosen to use).
4) Add onions, ginger, garlic. Saute well.
5) Add tomatoes and some more haldi, red chili powder and salt. Saute well.
6) Add dry spice powder, mix well and heat.
7) Add chicken pieces and cook. Add water as necessary to make a bit of gravy. Cook well.

Verdict: Oh my goodness!!!!  This was so good! All of us loved it and will certainly be making this curry for many years to come. And since we adored this curry just the way the recipe says, I feel there is no need to mess around trying to adapt this to chicken pickle. So that quest shall go on independently. This curry shall remain perfect just this way! :)

Thanks so much, Soma!

Thanks for reading everyone. Cheers and have a good weekend!