Topic: Pre cooked chicken

[mickyp]

Poppadoms freeze ok too, done that.
If im cooking a curry meal for friends i will either cook and freeze or cook it the day before so i can enjoy it without having to have been at the cooker for ages.

[Unclefrank]

I have tried the pre=cook and freeze option but i don't like serving this to my customers, doesn't seem to have that juicy chicken taste and texture, plus i pride my cooking on using fresh ingredients.

[livo]

I gave up on pre-cooking chicken some time (i.e., some years) ago.  I have never liked chicken tikka in a curry (I like each separately, but not combined), and as I am not in such a great hurry as your typical BIR chef, I prefer to cook my curries for longer and allow the (raw) chicken to absorb as much of the flavour of the sauce as possible without becoming over-cooked.  For mutton, it depends on the dish, but for most dishes (and certainly for a  biryani) I find that pre-cooking is essential unless one is willing to go the whole "dum biryani" route; even that cooks the mutton separatel;y from the rice for about 3/4 hour before the two are brought together for the final finishing off.

** Phil.

Phil, I thank you once again. The link you provide here is great.  If you haven't yet tried the Mandi Chicken, (Yemeni / Arabian Chicken Biryani) you really must.  The smokiness achieved in the rice by using the charcoal in ghee trick is incredible and anybody who wishes they had a tandoor will be astonished at the results. I used a piece that probably weighed 5 grams in a stainless bowl with 1 tsp of ghee. The smokiness is quite remarkable and I dare say it has other applications.

I will be trying the dum biryani but tonight I had chicken, not lamb.