Chicken chaat salad. If you are looking for an Indian inspired and absolutely delicious composed salad this is it. Big Indian flavours in a traditional main course salad.
I’m pretty sure I will catch some flak for the title of this post. Chaat means savoury snack in India. Street food. It also almost always includes chaat masala. Anything masala means a spice mix of sorts.
This isn’t really a savoury snack and it doesn’t include chaat masala. If I included a masala you’d have to go out of your way to find it. Hunt around for an Indian food shop, get there and buy it. Bet it wouldn’t happen. You’d just never try this recipe. That would be too bad.
The chicken in this appetizer is all Indian. Serve it on an Indian flat bread – that’s chicken chaat. The salad part – well that’s done somewhere I’m sure. Maybe.
This makes a nice western style starter to any Indian meal. You can increase the portion size, add some chickpeas to the salad and drizzle it with a yoghurt dressing. That makes a great light main course.
chicken chaat salad
Ingredients
- 2 Tbsp vegetable oil
- 2 chicken breasts boneless, skinless, cut into bite sized pieces.
- 1/2 onion coarsely chopped
- 1 Tbsp garlic ginger paste - recipe link below
- 1 tsp ground coriander
- 1 tsp cumin
- 1 tsp paprika
- 1/4 tsp cayenne pepper
- 1/4 tsp black pepper
- 1/3 tsp salt
- 1 1/2 Tbsp lemon juice
- 1 handful cilantro chopped
- 1 splash chicken stock
Instructions
- Combine all spices and salt in a small dish.
- Heat oil in a frying pan over medium heat.
- Add oil, then fry the onion gently until translucent.
- Reduce heat to medium low and add the garlic ginger paste. Fry until sizzling subsides.
- Add the spices and stir constantly for about 1 minute. You do not want your spices to burn so pay attention.
- Raise heat to medium high. Add chicken and fry, stirring occasionally for about 2 minutes.
- Add a bit of chicken stock and cook the chicken until just done and the stock has almost entirely boiled away. This takes about 5 minutes.
- Add lemon juice and cilantro and continue cooking for one minute more.
- Serve over greens or with Indian flat bread.
Notes
Nutrition
Dear Romain,
first I have a confession to make. I started following your recipe bravely.
Then I began to dream about the Chicken Chaat that I always have at my favorite Indian restaurant in The Hague, called Himalayan. And I had some tamarind sauce left in the fridge, and I added it to the dish. Then I thought about adding a tiny bit of diluted tomato paste. And I even added a bit of Amchoor powder and Asafoetida to the spice mix, because I have read somewhere that this is often a part of Chaat masala. So my confession is that I cheated on your recipe!
I also pre-cooked the chicken to avoid the water which mostly comes out of it going into the dish. Watery dishes are terrible, I think. I added the chicken stock after I had bloomed the spices, just little bits at a time until it vanished. It seems that by this the spices could really blend well. Then I added some lemon juice and the tamarind sauce and warmed up the chicken in this tasty sauce. For the last two minutes I added some cucumber (peeled and without the seeds), as they do it at Himalayan. So this time I used your recipe as a basis and spontaneously started experimenting.
And the result was perfect, no leftovers! We combined it with iceberg salad and some lavash-bread, and we had a Pfalz Müller-Thurgau from Cuntz&Scheu with it, which was a perfect match. To finish: Linie-akvavit.
By the way, I ordered Chaat Masala online today to see where this leads to.
Dear Romain, our whole family is so thankful for your excellent website and recipes! Our kids want to cook your dishes themselves now! So you planted a seed! And whenever I say that I am planning to cook dinner they ask: is it from glebekitchen? And when I say yes, they say “Yes!!!” too!
We’ll make this another glebekitchen summer-holiday!
Kind regards from Braunschweig, Germany!
Sounds like you took this recipe and just ran with it. Sounds awesome. Wish I’d been there to enjoy the feast along with your family!
There are recipes on glebekitchen for chaat masala as well as a more involved chicken chaat if you fancy a go.
Cheers to you and your family from Ottawa, Canada!
I love and use soooo many of your recipes, Romain. This one stands out because it was so simple and speedy to prepare just when I needed something amazing, but simple and speedy to prepare!
I was out of frozen curry base, but still had some ginger/garlic paste. Putting this together took no time. Thank you for all your recipes, tips and insights. You’re amazing 😙😙
Thank you very much for saying. I’m delighted to hear you are enjoying the recipes here and hopefully a few laughs along the way!
This looks so simple and delicious! Thanks for the tip on swapping out the garlic ginger paste. Can’t wait to try it.