Yogurt marinades for meats/poultry, and method followed? I tend to diverge from instructions...

Cooking Discussions
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I have a dozen extra fresh chicken legs (drums only) because they were bogo last week. The first batch I made into Peter’s (@PedroPero) Mom’s chicken and it was truly excellent, rib-sticking good and tasty comfort food. (Thanks Peter!).

Now I’ve got do deal with the other 4 pounds of chicken legs. I’m using this recipe from F&W:

But like a lot of recipes, it has you mix up everything for the marinade then dump it on the protein.

Instead, in lamb and pork and chicken recipes, I’ve been diverging from the instructions.

I salt at what I think is the right amount first (1% to 1.5%, depending on whether I’m supposed to salt just prior to grilling or baking, etc.), for about 1 hour (in this case, 1% because I’ll be adding more salt just as it hits the grill).

Then after the salt has been mostly absorbed, I’ll toss the meats with the garlic and ginger, and give it at least another 30 minutes.

Then toss with all the spices (in this case, cumin, coriander, RPF, paprika, turmeric, pepper, cinnamon) and let it go another 30-60 minutes.

After all that, I’ll add the called-for amount of yogurt and let it go the instructed 12+ hours or whatever.

My thinking is that the typical call-for mixing of all the ingredients into the yogurt (which is most often slated to be scraped off prior to grilling/cooking) is just a dilution of the flavors.

Thoughts?

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I don’t even use recipes.

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The recipe I use for murgh malai you marinade the chicken in the garlic/ginger paste for half an hour or so before adding the spices and yogurt for the final marinade. No middle step with just the spices added, but I don’t see any reason to not do it.

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That is essentially a tandoori chicken recipe (why they didn’t just call it that, I don’t know, “reminiscent of”… hmm).

Seems like a bit of overkill to marinate in that many steps when it’s going to marinate for 12+hours, but I do sort of get the logic of wanting the salt and ginger-garlic to be “closer” to the meat… maybe… but it would probably make more sense if the lead time were short.

What I can say is that for traditional tandoori chicken recipes, there is indeed a 2-step marinade: first, slash the legs in a few places and rub with salt, red chilli powder if using, and lemon juice, then after about 30 mins, rub in the rest of the yogurt marinade, making sure it gets into the slashes.

In either case, though, the chicken does not need to be swimming in yogurt — you just need enough to get into the slashes and all over the meat. It’s not a buttermilk brine. Also please don’t use low fat yogurt.

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How do you cook it after?

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Well noo, that certainly answers my question there!

:grinning:

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My guess it, based on how often I see a food writer get attacked for saying “this is X”, it’s to tone down that sort of response in the reviews/comments.

Reminiscent of or based on doesn’t seem to inflame passions quite so much.

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I use yogurt and Arvinda’s commercial tandoori masala spice mix for fish and chicken all the time. I freepour both parts, always turns out.

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