Pakistani Cooking: Chicken In Tomato Gravy – Chicken Karahi

A Karahi is actually a type of cooking pot, much like an Asian wok. It also refers to a type of dish cooked in that cooking pot. There are hundreds of different versions of karahi; this recipe is my own hybrid version, based from a Lahori street food mutton karahi. This one has lots of gravy, whereas most chicken karahis are quite dry. My family, who are Kashmiri in origin has to eat everything with rice (it’s a genetic compulsion, I’m sure) so this saucy version suits them well. In my opinion, it’s best eaten with tandoori naan.

A note on chickens in Pakistan:

There are two main breeds of chicken that are used for meat in Pakistan. Desi chicken and sheva chicken. Sheva is the equivalent of cage birds, factory farmed and bred to grow large waaay faster than nature intended. Desi chicken is free-range and typically brought into the market from villages. Unfortunately, desi is also reeeeaaaly tough and dark meat. You win some, you lose some. We try to eat desi chicken to avoid all the unnaturalness of sheva, which means that we have to cook it for about three times the length of sheva chicken (1/2 an hour in a pressure cooker…it’s that tough).

I have three aseel chickens in my front yard. Aseel are a funny looking breed, and they can be aggressive, so people use them for cock fighting. I hate that. But mine are lovely and quirky, with their own funny personalities. We’ve had them for about 3 months and received our first egg today…hooray!

Now back to the recipe.

Ingredients:

4 large onions sliced

6 to 8 medium tomatoes, roughly chopped

I chicken, cut into pieces

1 tsp turmeric

1 tsp chili powder (less if you prefer not so spicy)

4 tsp coriander powder

2 cloves garlic, mashed in a mortar and pestle

1 inch ginger, mashed in a mortar and pestle

3 tbsp oil

2 tsp ground black pepper

1 cup plain yoghurt

2 large green chilies, sliced

1 cup coriander leaves, roughly chopped

2 tbsp ginger, sliced into 1/16 inch thick fingers

Method:

Add onions, tomatoes, chicken, turmeric, chili, coriander powder, mashed garlic and ginger into a pressure cooker and mix. Cook for half an hour on high (adjust if you aren’t using tough-as-boots chicken). It may seem counterintuitive to not add water, but there is plenty of water in the onions, tomatoes and chicken.

Transfer the contents of the pressure cooker to a wide, deep pot and add oil, then cook for 20 minutes on high. Stir regularly.

Add pepper and yoghurt and cook until the gravy is thick and uniform and all the onion and tomato pieces have formed a smooth kind of gravy. Stir regularly so that the sauce reduces and thickens without sticking. This will take another 5 to 10 minutes cooking time.

Add green chilies, coriander leaves and ginger and stir through. Reserve a small amount of the coriander leaves and ginger slices for garnishing. Serve in a large bowl with the coriander and ginger sprinkled on top for garnish.

Tip

Use lamb instead of chicken, the timings are the same (1/2 hour in pressure cooker) for lamb as for desi chicken.