Quick and Easy Chicken Curry for Everyone

I come from a family which is mostly vegitarian apart from my Dad. I learnt to eat chicken with him whenever we used to go out to eat. It’s only after getting married that I learnt to cook meat as my husband is an all time chicken fan. But after being married for seven years and cooking for my family, I started going through bouts of bad days when I get confused as to what to make. I am not even sure if I want to make something time consuming and so try out my hand at something that will take only few minutes to cook. I remember sharing this recipe with my cousin who is a student and studying away from home and he called me back, telling me that all his friends loved his curry (which was a surprise as he is not into cooking that much) and also it was so easy to make that they now try this with different meat to get a variation of it. I stumbled upon this recipe by chance. One day, I was so tired (having cleaned the house for all morning) that I didn’t really want to cook but I had already told my husband I would be cooking chicken so I didn’t want to dissappoint him. I decided to use the pressure cooker instead of the normal pot cooking to reduce the time it takes to cook any chicken recipe.

Normally, I would heat the oil and then add the onions, tomatoes and chicken but this time I was so tired that I decided to do something that didn’t take me more than 10 minutes or so. I had diced boneless chicken with me. So I just added all the ingredients to the pressure cooker and cooked it. I didnt even taste it till evening as I went straight to bed after that, so imagine my surprise when in the evening I tasted it and it actually turned out good. My husband thought that I was trying out someone else’s recipe and loved the dish too. So now I use it every now and then when I just want to finish cooking asap and cook chicken really faast. Hope you all like it and please do let me know as I love to know if I could improve on anything with my cooking or writing. So here is my quick and easy recipe for Chicken Curry but as my cousin found out, you could use any meat and change the time for cooking according to the meat. The rest of the recipe will stay the same.

Recipe for Chicken Curry:

Ingredients:

500gms boneless chicken diced in 3/4 inch pieces
2 medium white onions finely chopped
2 medium tomatoes finely chopped
1/2 cup coriander leaves chopped finely for garnishing
1 tsp ginger paste
2 tsp garlic paste
1/2 tsp turmeric powder
1 1/2-2 tsp chicken masala (you could use this as much as you want as this will give the chicken it’s spicy flavour)
4-5 tsp oil
1-2 tsp lemon juice
1 tsp tomato puree
Salt to taste

Recipe:

Take a pressure cooker and add oil, onions, tomatoes, ginger paste, garlic paste, turmeric powder, chicken pieces (washed) and lemon juice all together without switching the gas on. Just mix it gently. Make sure you do not add any water to this as that will spoil the taste. Place the lid and let it cook for 8-10 minutes or 1 full whistle on a medium flame. Do not remove the lid and keep the pressure cooker on the same hob till the contents are cooled. This is because after you switch the gas off, the chicken will continue to cook on the heat of the same hob. Be careful if you are using a hot plate instead if a gas as that normally tends to cook the food at high heat as you can’t control the heating as easily as you could on the gas burner. Now open the lid and start the gas on low flame. At this point if you want the consistency of your curry more thin, add a little water. Add the tomato puree and chicken masala and mix well. Let it boil and then add the salt according to your taste. And finally garnish with coriander leaves. Your quick and easy chicken recipe is ready to serve with your choice of Indian bread like chapaties, roties or naan.

This recipe is healthy as you only use few tsp of oil instead of the normal heavy usage of oil in Indian Non-Veg recipes. And as suggested above, try the variations with different variet of meat. You will just have to adjust your pressure cooking time according to the meat. This recipe can also be made mild, medium or hot according to individual taste. Hope you all enjoy this recipe. All the best…