Indo-Caribbean Curry Chicken aka. Chicken Curry

This is a basic and straightforward Indo-Caribbean style curry chicken (or chicken curry if you’re Guyanese).

It’s really easy to adapt this anyway you’d like. Swap out the protein to just about anything you want, or load it up with more vegetables, add coconut milk to make it extra indulgent.

The marinade here, (especially the culantro, not be confused with cilantro) is what lends this dish the typical Caribbean flavours. I strongly suggest getting your hands on culantro, but if you can’t coriander is a very good substitute. The most reliable source of culatro is any Vietnamese market. Look for Ngo Gai. 

Ingredients

For the Marinade:

• 1 bunch Culatro (sub coriander, or if you’re one of those people that doesn’t like coriander, sub parsley)
• 1 bunch green onions, ends trimmed
• 1 medium onion peeled and roughly chopped
• 6-8 cloves of garlic peeled
• 1 anaheim pepper roughly chopped
• ¼ cup water
• A few sprigs of thyme (optional)

Throw all of the above in a blender and blend into a paste. Reserve a couple tablespoons for the recipe below. Pour the rest into an ice cube tray and freeze. Pop one out each time you need a flavour bomb! 

For the Curry

• 4-6 boneless skinless chicken thighs. Trimmed of excess fat and cut into quarters (you can use any chicken part really. If I’m feeling ambitious I’ll cut up a whole chicken. Bones make everything better)
• 1 medium potato cut into chunks (optional)
• 100g frozen pigeon peas (optional)
• 2 tbsp marinade (see above)
• 1 medium onion diced
• 2 clove of garlic minced
• 1 hot pepper of your choice (add more or less if you like/don’t like heat). I’m going to be using a wiri wiri but thai/scotch bonnet/habanero all work well
• 1 heaping tablespoon of curry powder (I like using Lalah’s Madras powder, but anything labeled as Madras, or Jamaican curry powder will work. You can even do this just with your favourite brand of Garam Masala)
• ½ cup water
• 2 tbsp neutral flavoured oil
• Salt and pepper to taste

Method

1. Mix the cut up chicken with the marinade. You can let this sit overnight in the fridge or you can mix all this up while you’re getting the rest prepped. If you’re going to cook other “hard” vegetables with this (like potato or squash, you can also toss them in the marinade at this point)
2. Mix the curry powder with the water and stir together
3. Add the oil once your pot is at medium high heat
4. Add your onions. Sauté 4-5 minutes still they start picking up some brown colour
5. Add your garlic and hot pepper. Keep sautéing till the onions are very brown and the garlic is golden brown. Don’t burn the garlic here. If the garlic is browning too fast, turn down the heat
6. Add the curry powder/water mixture. Keep stirring. Keep cooking till you start to see oil separating from the curry paste. This is one of the most important steps. You’re toasting the spices, and cooking the masal at this stage. This is where you’re getting a lot of the flavour. Under cooking the masala is one of the more common mistakes when making curry
7. Add your chicken, potatoes, peas to the pot and stir to combine and coat everything 
8. Turn the heat down to medium. Add a pinch of salt. The meat and veg should start springing some water. Use that to scrape up all the goodness that’s sticking to the sides and bottom of the pot. Once half that liquid has dried up, add some more water back depending on how much gravy you want. If you like your curry dry, just keep adding a little bit of water at a time so things don’t stick and the veg cooks. If you like a lot of gravy (long water), add enough water to just barely cover everything
9. Bring the pot back to the boil, turn the heat down to medium low and let simmer till the chicken and veg are cooked. Check for seasoning and adjust at this point 
10. I like to thicken the gravy by mashing up some of the potatoes, but that’s up to you 

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