Tandoori Paste Recipe

My Tandoori Paste Recipe is basically your one-stop-shop for a tandoori inspired marinade.

An incredibly easy tandoori paste recipe that is quick to put together and will create a delicious tandoori paste that you can slather or marinate pretty much anything with.

My favourite is tandoori salmon cooked on the BBQ, but this works just as well with eggplants / aubergines and obviously the famous tandoori chicken.

A brief lesson first – tandoori comes from the name of the tandoor, a large vertical (usually clay) cooking vessel most popular in India. A tandoor is less a BBQ more an outside oven. Naans or breads are slapped against the inside wall of the tandoor and cook in a matter of minutes (if not seconds). Meats are usually skewered and placed inside the tandoor vertically. Think of a tandoor as an upright pizza oven, or rather a pizza oven is a fallen over tandoor!

So why give the definition of a tandoor? Well, it’s just for clarity that a true ‘tandoori’ dish would be cooked in a tandoor – but it’s a bit like a lamb tagine recipe – most are now just cooked in the oven with tagine being the name of the cooking vessel opposed to the recipe itself.

Anyway, I digress – back to my tandoori marinade recipe or tandoori paste recipe!

You want some more salmon recipes, BBQ recipes or just some more fish recipes?

I’ve used this tandoori cooked this tandoori salmon recipe a lot and I’ve noticed something;

1. The colour of this tandoori marinade or tandoori paste recipe is not bright red – if you really want it bright red like you get ‘down at the local Indian’ then you’ll need to add food colouring or beetroot. I don’t but I’m just letting you know. The chilli powder and saffron will add some colour to the tandoori paste.
2. The tandoori marinade recipe is actually quite delicate; if you char the marinade during cooking too much it will basically burn the flavour out.

You see that picture of my tandoori salmon? You want it less charred than that! 

Tandoori Paste Marinade – Ingredients:

200g greek yogurt

2 tbl ginger – grated

3 cloves garlic – crushed

Small pinch saffron strands

1 tsp (heaped) tamarind paste

1 tsp ground cumin

1 tsp ground coriander

1 tsp paprika

1 tsp garam masala

1 tsp mild chilli powder

1 tsp salt

1 tsp lemon juice

1/2 tsp cayenne pepper (or finely sliced green birds-eye)

1/2 tsp turmeric

1 tbl olive oil

Few turns black pepper

Tandoori Paste – Method:

1. Soak the saffron strands in a tablespoon of hot water for 5 minutes.
2. Add the saffron and water and the rest of the ingredients together (except the salmon and fresh coriander) and combine.
3. If you don’t need all the marinade you can save some as a condiment on the side (just make sure it hasn’t been in touch with raw fish or meat).

Perfect on fish, meat and vegetables! But don’t forget a squeeze of lemon at the end.