Chicken tikka masala is a dish of chunks of roasted marinated chicken in a spiced curry. Its origin is disputed. The curry is usually creamy and orange-coloured. It is among the United Kingdom's most popular dishes.
Composition
Chicken tikka masala is composed of chicken tikka, boneless chunks of chicken marinated in spices and yogurt that are roasted in an oven, served in a creamy curry sauce. A tomato and coriander sauce is common, but no recipe for chicken tikka masala is standard; a survey found that of 48 different recipes, the only common ingredient was chicken. The sauce usually includes tomatoes, cream, coconut cream and spices like many versions of its namesake masala spice mix. The sauce and chicken pieces may be coloured orange using foodstuffs such as turmeric, paprika, tomato purée or with food dye. The dish shares some similarity with butter chicken, both in the method of creation and appearance.
Origins
The origin of the dish is not certain. Some trace the origins of the dish to the South Asian community in Britain and others claim that the dish was created in the Indian subcontinent. The Multicultural Handbook of Food, Nutrition and Dietetics credits its creation to Bangladeshi migrant chefs in the 1960s, after migrating from what was then East Pakistan. At the time, these migrant chefs developed and served a number of new inauthentic "Indian" dishes, including chicken tikka masala. Historians of ethnic food Peter and Colleen Grove discuss various origin-claims of chicken tikka masala, concluding that the dish "was most certainly invented in Britain, probably by a Bangladeshi chef". They suggest that "the shape of things to come may have been a recipe for Shahi Chicken Masala in Mrs Balbir Singh’s Indian Cookery published in 1961". Rahul Verma, a food critic who writes for The Hindu, said he first tasted the dish in 1971 and that its origins were in Punjab, India. He said "It's basically a Punjabi dish not more than 40–50 years old and must be an accidental discovery which has had periodical improvisations". Another explanation is that it originated in a restaurant in Glasgow, Scotland. This version recounts how a British Pakistani chef, Ali Ahmed Aslam, proprietor of the Shish Mahal restaurant in the west end of Glasgow, invented chicken tikka masala by improvising a sauce made from yogurt, cream, and spices. In 2013, his son Asif Ali told the story of its invention in 1971 to the BBC's Hairy Bikers TV cookery programme: In July 2009, then British Member of ParliamentMohammad Sarwartabled an Early Day Motion in the House of Commons asking that Parliament support a campaign for Glasgow to be given European Union protected geographical status for chicken tikka masala. The motion was not chosen for debate, nor did Sarwar speak on this subject in Parliament.
