“Trompoori Jarbecue” Chicken

… or “Trompo Tandoori made from a Jar and Barbecued” Chicken. This is a first spin of the Trompo King “Vertical Skewer” to make a kind of tandoori chicken. Hardly a “recipe” more of a test drive…but sometimes the quick and easy way is the right way to go.

I suppose before I get to the dish itself, a quick recap and link to the “tool” being used here. The “Trompo King” is a high quality, slightly pricy upright skewer used for meat stacking. Nicely made, feels solid and will open top some additional opportunities I am sure.

OK, so it was going to be chicken (thighs of course !) but what about the flavour ? The marinade ? Choices were :

Something Mexican (some sort of tomato/chilli base)
Something Greek (garlic, lemon, oregano, cumin)
Moroccan / North African ? (Ras-al-hanout, cinnamon, cloves, harissa…you name it !)
Proper Indian from scratch (ALL the spices !)
Cheat Indian (from a jar)
And so much more…a good resource here is Steven Raichlen’s “Barbecue Sauces, Rubs and Marinades” book – with flavours and ideas from all round the world and for all sorts of food (best index I’ve ever seen !)

Today it was NOT anything complicated – it was Option 5 without a book or recipe, largely because I saw my three “ingredients” immediately in the kitchen. A jar of Sharwoods Tandoori paste, some natural yoghurt, and tandoori powder to adjust intensity as needed…and I thought, “how hard can it be ?”.

As it was a first run, I also “chickened out” from trusting the stainless steel’s durability (which is one of the two reasons for this “device”…the second being the skewer !), so aluminium foil protection came out and an onion which I’d read somewhere was a good idea for such things…probably to keep the bottom layer elevated off the base of the pan.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. First, the complex recipe.

Open a jar of Sharwoods. Open a pot of natural yoghurt. Mix in a bowl. In this case, I started with a blend of 1 part Sharwoods, 2 parts yoghurt. If you feel you’re adding too much of the paste then add tandoori seasoning/powder. While you’re getting your head around the right proportions, trim the chicken thighs. Take all the yucky parts off – the blood clots, the sinewy bits (sorry) and flatten them out. You can beat them with a mallet – I’ve done that before. For these I just essentially butterflied them.

Then combine with the marinade. Mix thoroughly and leave in the fridge for a few hours or overnight.

There’s clearly more to this part potentially…but not this time.

The following day…

…or later that day. This is where the Trompo, the foil and the onion come into play. Start assembling the stack of chicken onto the skewer. Not much to this either (not with this recipe). There’s no fancy alternating with other ingredients – just load the meat onto the skewer and for good measure stick the other half of the onion on the top ! For this cook I used the 7” skewer. (I can see we’ll have a lot of party fun with the 12” skewer – maybe a proper Doner Kebab with some ground lamb/beef or something.)

Then with the help of some smoke from a fired up KJ Classic and a MEATER+ probe, we’re off. Temperature was put to about 300F which is certainly not Tandoor temperature – more of a slow sweat – but the key here was to cook the thighs to a safe internal temperature of 165-170F. I went for the higher temperature. It would have been OK at 165 to be honest.

Note the additional veg at the base of the Trompo – just to stay healthy !

A couple of hours later, and we were done. You’ll see from the main image the “look” of a Tandoori chicken kebab – actually came out really well for a “jar” dinner. The top layer of the onion didn’t make it, nor did some of those “afterthought” vegetables on the base, but the main event was a success. Sliced, diced, served with flatbreads, raita and mango chutney.