Whole Chicken Tandoori Roast: Crispy, Juicy Perfection

This whole chicken tandoori roast is the best thing to happen to our Sunday roast dinners in a long time. Don’t get me wrong – I love the simple decadence of a traditional British Sunday roast. It is one of my favorite things. Roasted meat and potatoes, crispy yet pillow-soft Yorkshire puddings, and vegetables all drowned in gravy. Yum.

But after several hundred iterations of the same meal, you think: how could we spice this up?

The perfect answer: a chicken tandoori roast.

It’s a full chicken roast that’s been spatchcocked and steeped in a spice-laden, tenderizing marinade and then roasted until it’s flavorful, tender, and oh-so-juicy on the inside with crispy-charred perfection on the outside.

Best of all, it’s positively easy to make. Basically a one-pan recipe for the chicken and veggies.

Served up with typical Sunday roast accompaniments like roasted potatoes, gravy, and Yorkshire pudding and tandoori chicken essentials like mango chutney, onion chutney, raita, and so on – it’s the most delicious melding of two cultures.

Chicken Tandoori Roast Ingredients

So what do you need for this chicken tandoori roast?

A Whole Chicken

A whole chicken, of course. I’m using a 1.75 kg chicken (almost 4 lbs), which is more than enough for our little family of 3, plus a little leftover.

Tandoori Marinade

A tenderizing marinade bursting with flavor – it’s an easy-to-mix combination of:

• 1/2 cup plain yogurt
• 3 tbsp lemon juice
• 5 cloves garlic
• 1 tbsp fresh ginger
• 1 tbsp garam masala (substitute curry powder if you can’t find it)
• 1 tbsp salt
• 1/2 tbsp ground cumin
• 1 tbsp ground coriander
• 1 tsp turmeric
• 1/4 tsp cardamom powder (green)
• 1/4 tsp cinnamon

If you’re using minced garlic and ginger, just mix everything up in a bowl. If you’re using garlic cloves and/or fresh garlic, mix together all the wet ingredients first in a blender or food processor and then add the spices.

Tandoori Glaze

When the chicken it about halfway through roasting, we’ll be basting it in a delicious glaze of chili-infused ghee. For this, you’ll need ghee and about a teaspoon of Kashmiri chili powder, Aleppo chili, or cayenne pepper.

Whole Chicken Tandoori Recipe

This is a very simple recipe. There is marinade time and roasting time. But the amount of work that you have to do is minimal. Which leaves you plenty of time to prep all the little sauces and side dishes you’ll want to have for the roast.

Make the Tandoori Marinade

Let’s start with the tandoori chicken marinade.

If you’re using already minced ginger and garlic, go ahead and combine everything in a bowl.

If you’re using garlic cloves and nubs of fresh ginger, blend the yogurt, lemon juice, garlic, and ginger in a blender or food processor. Then add the spices to it and stir to mix well. Set aside.

Next, we’re going to make the delicious buttery-chili sauce that we’ll be basting the chicken with halfway through roasting.

Melt 2 tablespoons of ghee and mix a teaspoon of Kashmiri chili powder, Aleppo chili, or cayenne pepper into it. Set aside until the chicken is halfway through roasting. This gives it quite a bit of time for the chili to infuse into the ghee.

Spatchcock the Chicken

If you haven’t done it yet, spatchcocking is a long name for a simple process. It involves cutting out the spine of the chicken and pressing down on the breast bone so the chicken can lay flat.

This does two very important things: it allows the marinade to penetrate everywhere (more surface area! yay!) and it reduces the cooking time massively (juicier chicken!).

Plus, did I mention it’s very easy to do? Here’s an easy, detailed tutorial if you want it.

Using kitchen or poultry shears, cut along each side of the chicken spine. You want to cut as close to the spine so you don’t remove excess meat but if you don’t succeed, that’s okay, too. We’ll be saving this chicken backbone for delicious broth later so extra meat just adds to the flavor.

Once you’ve removed the spine, open the chicken up. It will be laying almost completely flat. You can stop at this stage or use a sharp knife or shears to cut the cartilage above the breast bone. Voila. You’ve just spatchcocked a chicken.

Marinade the Chicken

Place the chicken in a large bowl and smother it on both sides with the marinade.

Cover and place in the fridge to marinate for 3 hours. If you can do more, that’s great too, but 3 hours is more than good enough for tender, flavorful chicken.

Roast Tandoori Chicken

Preheat the oven to 425°F (220°C). Place the whole chicken on a large baking sheet lined pan. Pour any remaining marinade on top and place it in the oven. Let it bake for 25 minutes.

While it bakes is the ideal time to prep any vegetables you’ll be roasting with the chicken. Here’s what I used:

• Baby potatoes: Get them washed and ready, chopped if you prefer.
• Carrots: Washed with both ends chopped off. I used rainbow Chantenay carrots so they didn’t need peeling.
• Onions: Peeled and sliced thinly.

When the chicken is finished baking for 25 minutes, take the whole pan out of the oven. Add the potatoes, carrots, and onions to the pan. Coat the vegetables in the marinade and chicken juices that have dripped out.

Then, baste the chicken with the chili pepper-infused ghee. You can flip and do the underside but I just go generously on the breast, wings, and thighs.

Stick the whole pan in the oven again and bake for another 20 to 25 minutes until the chicken is cooked through. It takes around 45 to 50 minutes for a 1.75kg (3.9 lbs) chicken to cook.

How long it takes you will vary depending on the size of your chicken, your oven, etc. The safest way to know for sure is when your meat thermometer reads 165°F (75°C).

Take the chicken out of the oven when it’s ready and let it rest for around 10 to 15 minutes. Serve and enjoy!

What to Serve with Chicken Tandoori Roast

To be honest, pretty much everything works – basmati rice, biryani, naan, parathas, or other flatbreads. Tandoori chicken is magical in how well it tastes with almost any side dish.

But I love having this whole chicken tandoori as part of a Sunday roast. And that means, it’s going to need some sidekicks, like…

British Roast Usual Suspects

All the usual foods you’ll have with a roast go so well with the whole chicken tandoori. Like:

• Roasted potatoes (roasted in the chicken juices and marinade, of course!)
• Roasted vegetables (same thing as above)
• Yorkshire puddings
• Gravy

I like to pile everything on top of a Yorkshire pudding and stuff it all into my mouth. Delicious.

Tandoori Must-Haves

You can’t have tandoori without at least some chutneys and raita. I love mango chutney and onion chutney. Red onion chutney is easy to make and the most delicious thing. You can also go with cilantro, tomato, mint – whatever you like.

Raita is also versatile. You can do good old cucumber, mint, even beetroot.

What to Do with Leftovers?

If you’re lucky enough to have leftovers, you can store them in the fridge in an airtight container for up to 4 days. That’s the same for chicken, potatoes, and the carrots.

As for the chicken carcass, any and all leftover bones, and that chicken backbone leftover from spatchcocking – I highly recommend making use of this. Dump it all in a colander, rinse off the excess marinade (or don’t) and simmer it all into a delicious chicken stock. Add onions, garlic, green onions – anything you want to add a little extra flavor.

Just 2 to 3 hours gets you a lovely, deep broth that you can use for a whole lot of dishes.