Dahi Murgh Recipe: 

Unlike chicken roast, Dahi Murgh is true to its name, well sort of. Dahi means curd or yogurt, and it is the main ingredient of the dish. Murag means rooster or cock. But for the recipe you necessarily do not need a rooster, any chicken will do. Different breeds of chicken will offer slightly varying taste, but to me it is close to negligible. Marinating the meat with yogurt and other spices is what does the real magic for the dish.

I am not a fan of plain chicken curry because I’ve had it way too many times for one lifetime. I went on a tangent about my dislike towards chicken curry (not other chicken based dishes, i love them) while writing about Badam Murgh (Cashew chicken). The gist of my rant is that I prefer chicken curry when it is made in a special way, like with mustard, or cashew nut, or tomatoes, or if the recipe for the curry is something completely different. And today’s Dahi Murgh is exactly that, a completely unique kind of chicken curry.

At first glance Dahi Murgh kind of looks like chicken roast. For those of you who are not familiar with the Bengali style chicken roast, it is not an oven recipe. It is cooked like every other Bengali recipe, on top of a stove in a pan. From my very cursory knowledge the western style of chicken roast involves stuffing the cavity with ingredients I do not know of, and then roasting the whole chicken. But Bengali style chicken roast is not exactly roasted chicken. It is a rich and flavored chicken curry. And of course a whole chicken is not used for Bengali style chicken roast, rather the chicken is cut into 4 pieces, two leg pieces and two breast pieces. Then I do not know anything about the actual recipe and Ms Shortcut Sokhina was not of any help in this case either.

And since I do not know the recipe for Bengali style chicken roast, I cannot pinpoint how it is different from Dahi Murgh. They are both chicken curries with less gravy and both require yogurt as one of the primary ingredients. Now one visual difference I can point out is that the pieces of chicken are much smaller in Dahi Murgh. But that information means nothing because does the size of pieces of chicken change anything? I don’t think so. But seeing the ingredients list, I am 90% sure that chicken roast does not require orange juice. Then again I might be wrong, and anyone more knowledgeable is requested to leave a comment about how easily distinguishable the two dishes are or if they are actually the same dish.

Unlike chicken roast, Dahi Murgh is true to its name, well sort of. Dahi means curd or yogurt, and it is the main ingredient of the dish. Murag means rooster or cock. But for the recipe you necessarily do not need a rooster, any chicken will do. Different breeds of chicken will offer slightly varying taste, but to me it is close to negligible. Marinating the meat with yogurt and other spices is what does the real magic for the dish. Though the time required to marinate the chicken is different in different recipes. Some recipes I found online said waiting for 30 minutes is enough. But I think sticking to the recipe the way Moni Dadi wrote it down is the way to go, and Ms Shortcut Sokhina agreed with me. The Dahi Murgh we made, the one you can see in the picture, was marinated overnight. But be sure to put the marinated chicken inside a fridge.

While looking at other recipes one thing I noticed is that most of them were dark red-ish brown, the normal color of curry. While the one we made had a much brighter color. Our Dahi Murgh’s color is almost the same as Bengali style chicken roast. I am quite a bit confused about which ingredient or step of the cooking process creates the difference in color. It probably has a very easy answer and dear reader I would really appreciate it if any of you would educate me on the matter.