Tandoori Chicken in the USA

[bong]

[ My background: I am an Indian Bengali, born and bred in Kolkata and now living in California for the last few years. ]

Now, here in the USA, and I suspect its the same in the UK, tandoori chicken as served in Indian restaurants is always colored red. There are a few exceptions (i.e. Shalimar in San Francisco, which IMO serves one heck of a tandoori chicken), but they are extremely rare.

Question #1: Does anybody know who started this trend of using red color in Tandoori Chicken?

I personally don't have anything against food coloring, I am just curious. Especially because the color doesn't add to the taste.

Question #2: Anybody knows who started this trend of putting "Tandoori Chicken" on the menu of restaurants in the USA/UK?

In India, other than the five-star hotel restaurants (even in those its kinda rare), I have never really seen "Tandoori Chicken" on the menus of Punjabi restaurants. Chicken is indeed served in those restaurants, its just called something else on the menu.

These days, no one in the USA will believe you have an Indian restaurant unless you have Tandoori chicken on your menu.

These burning questions are keeping me awake at night.

I figured if anyone could answer these questions it would have to be the folks here at eGullet...

So there.

[MatthewB]

Welcome, Bong!

(I just had to say that. )

[bilrus]

Hi, Bong. (I wanted to say that even more. Although I am sure you have heard it all before.)

Is what the five star restaurants serve similar to the Tandoori Chicken or Chicken Tikka that we get here? And do the non-five stars do any tandoori chicken dishes, despite what they are called?

[BBhasin]

These burning questions are keeping me awake at night.

I figured if anyone could answer these questions it would have to be the folks here at eGullet...

So there.

Dear Bong,

Just so that you can go to sleep.

1. who started this trend of adding red color to the tandoori chicken?

I frankly dont know but I am going to hazard a guess.( just so you can get your forty winks)

Now there was this Dhabba ( a streetside eatery with an open front with the kitchen also in front with a tandoor etc and marinated meats, including tandoori chicken, displayed on skewers at the front, to attract customers) Banta Singh who operated this place had good food and the place was very sucessful.

Along came Santa Singh who set up a similar venture accross the street. How was he to let the world know that his product was better? He added a little Deghi Mirch (akin to paprika) which gave his chicken a reddish hue and customers flocked there.

Banta Singh saw this and out came his bottle of red color and the dye war was on until the chicken would not get any redder and they had to go back to competeing on the strength of their food. Which is the way it ought to be.

I went to school to learn, among other things, Indian cooking. Have worked in Indian restaurants, including those in hotels. Here is what I learned from my experience

- Tandoori Chicken is not really supposed to be red but an orangish red color which a lot of cooks achive by blending eggshade yellow and red dye.

- even though some reciepes call for addition of food coloring I believe it to be incorrect.

- In the Delhi region red coloring was banned as the dye was a perochemical deivative and considered a carcenogen. If the health inspector caught you, under the food adultration act, you would go straight to jail.

- but the red color was desirable because of its visual impact and chefs would restore to disolving paprika like peppers in oil and addin to the marinade to enhance the color. In the Curry Bible by Pat Chapman I believe one tandoori chicken reciepe had betroot powder listed as one of the ingredients.

- when I started my little place in Alexandria I decided to buck the trend and go without the color. My customers practically threw the chicken in my face as ' it was not authentic '. I'll bet you can guess my recourse!

- Some people ( in the US) believed that cooking in the tandoor turned the chicken red! Thats what they had been told.

Thats my red chicken story.

Regarding the bussiness of tandoori chicken only being on the menus of restaurants in the US and hotels in India, I am afraid Bong, I am going to have to beg to differ. In the North any restaurant with a tandoor had tandoori chicken. Indian restaurant chains(if you can call them that) like Gaylords, Kwalities, Ambassador etc all had tandoori chicken. Moti mahal in Delhi and Amber in calcutta both had tandoori chicken. I do not know too much about Bombay and the area around there.

Who put tandoori chicken on Indian menus in the US?

Probably some enterprising Punjabi. Its a great dish. Good taste, good presentation, fairly easy to prepare and universally liked. I am all for it. When the audience tires of it or becomes more sophisticated and demanding you will see restaurants also dropping it in favour of more intricate tandoori kababs etc. But good kababs unlike the simple tandoori chicken require expertise and good tandoori chefs, which majority of indian restaurants lack so dont look for a drastic change just yet.

are you asleep yet????

[Carolyn Tillie]

BBhasin;

I'm not sure if Bong will be able to sleep at night, but rest assured that I will! That was incredibly informative and answered a questoin I had been curious about for some time.

Thank you!

[skchai]

Not that I have anything useful to add, but . .. .

The practice of dyeing chicken must be quite long-lived, and as BBhasin, mentions, seems to have originated in India itself. The Time-Life Cooking of India, by Santha Rama Rau, published in 1969, mentions that chefs in India color their tandoori chicken using cochineal dye. This, I believe, is from squashed bugs, but at any rate is "natural". Other natural forms of coloring might have included Kashmiri Mirch or Maval (cockscomb flowers). Coloring seems to have been taken to the current extreme, however, once tandoori chicken reached Britain.

Doesn't seem to be any consensus about how Tandoori Chicken became such a standby in Indian restaurant food, other than that it was spread by the Punjabi diaspora to other parts of India and the world. The restaurant Moti Mahal popularized it in Delhi and Sher e Punjab likewise in Bombay, but it's not even clear whether they were really the pioneers or simply the first ones to be successful.

[BBhasin]

Hey Bong.......WAKE UP!!

I forgot to tell you about my RED TANDOORI CHICKEN experience at the Calfornia Pizza Kitchen.

This was actually a few years ago. When I saw the Tandoori Chicken Pizza on the menu, against my wife's better judgement I HAD to have it.

Well, it came with strips of chicken on it that were so red ,any self respecting Indian restaurant would hang their head in shame. It did not taste very great ( and I had to hear "I told you so" ten times from my wife) but I wolfed it down with the sweet major grey mango chutney they supplied with it.

So what did I think of the experience?

All I will say is that I was glad I was not scheduled for a stool test the next morning, as that would definetely have left the pathologist very perplexed.

[Suvir Saran]

Not that I have anything useful to add, but . .. .

The practice of dyeing chicken must be quite long-lived, and as BBhasin, mentions, seems to have originated in India itself.  The Time-Life Cooking of India, by Santha Rama Rau, published in 1969, mentions that chefs in India color their tandoori chicken using cochineal dye.  This, I believe, is from squashed bugs, but at any rate is "natural".  Other natural forms of coloring might have included Kashmiri Mirch or Maval (cockscomb flowers).    Coloring seems to have been taken to the current extreme, however, once tandoori chicken reached Britain.

Skchai, you can now understand why none of us need be here.

Writing from Hawaii, you have all the information we Indians would want to share.

As I finished reading BBhasins informative and detailed and what I understand to be very acurate post, I was wanting to add about the cochineal dye and cockscomb coloring. I was pleasantly not very surprised (in a good way) that you had mentioned both. I am always amazed at how much you know of Indian cooking. And again, I must thank you for sharing so generously with us in this forum all you know. Thanks!

Some chefs add a little ketchup or tomato paste in addition for coloring.

And yes, as BBhasin points out, many a fine restaurant across India, proudly serve Tandoori Chicken. And many, unfortunately, do have food coloring in their recipes.

[bong]

Thank you BBhasin, skchai and the others. Especially BBhasin for such an informative post.

I learnt a lot.

I know exactly what you said about the California Pizza Kitchen episode -- I also have experienced the same, and that was my first and last time.

I will indeed sleep better now...