The chicken pickle is one of the most appetizing sides and one should always have this in their refrigerator at all times. When you are really lazy to cook a good dish or when you don’t have time at all but still want to have a good meal, this can nail it for you. This goes best with rice and dal(pulses).  Also, you can simply have it with steamy hot rice or roti. In other words, this my Jack in the box for an Indian meal. A close friend of mine recently moved to Munich and she had been spoiled with so many wonderful Indian dishes. I am making this one for her and will have to be ready by the end of the day before the flight goes. I have got 2 variations of this pickle in the same recipe. One is deep fry and the other is shallow fry. This one that I am doing today is deep fry which also means the chicken will become hard eventually. The advantage of this version is that you can keep it at room temperature for the first 24 hours or a bit more(which is why I can send this to my buddy in Munich on an overnight flight). Shallow fry pickle is soft and moist and this needs to go into the refrigerator when it cools down.

Ingredients

• 600 grams boneless chicken
• 2 tablespoons coriander
• 1 tablespoon black pepper
• 5 cloves
• 2 cardamoms
• 1 tablespoon fenugreek
• 1 tablespoon mustard seed
• 2 tablespoons white poppy seed
• 3 tablespoons chili powder
• 1+1 turmeric powder
• 20-30 garlic cloves
• 1 small red onion (fried)
• 1 tablespoon + 1 teaspoon salt
•  1/3 cup lime juice
• 1/2 cup oil
• 1 1/2 cup oil (for frying)
•  2.5-liter water

Instructions: 

Wash the chicken thoroughly and cut the chicken into bite-size pieces. I always prefer the leg pieces as I find them more flavoursome.

Take a pot with 2.5 liters of water along with 1 tablespoon of salt and 1 tablespoon of turmeric powder.  Bring them to a boil.  Put the chicken into the boiling water and cook for 3 to 5 minute. For shallow fry, you can skip this step and you just need to put some salt and turmeric powder on the chicken and shallow fry them.

Drain them in a colander and keep it aside and let them cool down.

In a frying pan take coriander, black pepper, fenugreek, clove and cardamom and dry roast them in low heat.

Once they cool down, grind them into a coarse powder as shown below.

Now dry roast the poppy seed and mustard seed together at low heat. They might get burned fast and you need to keep an eye on this.

Grind them into powder as shown below.

As I mentioned I am doing the Deep fry version, take a wok and put 1 1/2 cup oil on it.  Let’s fry the onion first before you fry the drained chicken. Take a small onion and julienne them and fry them till golden brown.

After removing the fried onion, you can now fry the chicken batch by batch till they turn golden brown.

Drain them on a kitchen towel and keep it aside.

For those who like to use fresh oil for the remaining process of assembling the pickle, take a clean wok and put 1/2 cup oil into the wok. Otherwise, for those who prefer to use the same used oil, you do not need to off the heat and can continue to proceed. Put all the grind ingredients along with turmeric, chili powder, fried onion, salt and the fried chicken. You have to taste the salt level as this one consumes more amount of salt compared to other dishes.Fry them for 3 minutes.Add garlic now and continue to fry them for 2-3 minutes more.

As always, you are the best person to define your own spice level. You can add more or less depending on your choice.

You can cut off the heat and add the lemon juice (shown below) or vinegar.

For those who used fresh oil during the assembling phase might need some extra oil.

When it cools down, you can keep it in the fridge. This can last for more than a month. I hope you find this straightforward and easy. I always believe in keeping things simple. Do let me know how it turns out for you too:)