Love the chicken balti you get in your local curry restaurant? Now you can make it at home with this easy homemade Chicken Balti fakeaway recipe. Better still, it takes just over 30 minutes to make and comes in at just 269 calories – much less than a takeaway!
Love chicken balti?
What do you usually order when you go to your local curry restaurant or get an Indian takeaway?
I have a few favourites I usually rotate around: Chicken Bhuna, Lamb Rogan Josh, Chicken Tikka Masala and Chicken Dhansak for sure. But Chicken Balti is definitely up there. I just can’t get enough of the rich, spicy, tomato-y, slightly smoky sauce wrapped round chunks of perfectly cooked chicken.
So it feels like a bit of an omission that I haven’t included a homemade version of this curry house classic on my website – until now!
If you love chicken balti, then you are going to LOVE this easy Homemade Chicken Balti fakeaway recipe!
Better still, it takes just 35 minutes to make and comes in at just 269 calories – even if you add in a portion of pilau rice and a homemade naan, that’s still far fewer calories than a takeaway!
What is chicken balti?
Chicken balti is a popular British-Indian curry, where chicken is cooked in a rich, tomato-based sauce with onions, peppers, garlic and a blend of aromatic spices, such as garam masala, cumin, coriander and paprika.
It is particularly popular in Birmingham, UK where this curry was invented. (Or perhaps it’s more accurate to say it was adapted from a traditional Indian recipe to suit the British market.) In fact there is an area of Birmingham that is known as the ‘Balti Triangle’. In its heyday there were more than 30 balti houses in the Balti Triangle! (Sadly that number has dwindled dramatically in recent years.)
‘Balti’ actually refers to the type of pan this curry is cooked in. A ‘balti’ pan is a flat-bottomed wok-like pan that gives balti curries their signature smoky taste. The term ‘balti’ therefore can refer to both the curry and the pan in which it’s traditionally cooked.
Fortunately, there is no need to go out and buy a special balti pan for this recipe – a wok is a great substitute. (If you don’t have a wok, you can use a large frying pan.)
How to make homemade chicken balti?
Chicken balti is so easy to make at home!
All you need to do is fry chicken breast pieces over a high heat, then remove to a plate. Next, fry sliced onions, garlic, ginger, chilli and spices in the same pan.
Add tinned tomatoes and chopped peppers, then simmer for 10 minutes. Add the part-cooked chicken pieces back into the pan and simmer for a further 10 minutes.
Stir in some chopped fresh coriander and serve.
(Full recipe given in the recipe card below.)
Make it your own
This recipe is very flexible, so feel free to adapt it to suit your tastes! Here are a few ideas:
- Use prawns, turkey, lamb or beef instead of chicken
- Use chicken thigh instead of chicken breast
- Use leftover roast chicken instead of freshly cooked chicken breast
- Use curry powder instead of the garlic, spices and chilli flakes
- Use fresh chilli instead of the dried chilli flakes
- Use passata instead of the chopped tinned tomatoes
- Make this go further by adding in other vegetables, such as carrots, peppers, cauliflower or aubergine.
- Make this go further by adding in a tin of chickpeas or lentils.
(Did you adapt this recipe? I’d love to hear about it! Let us know in the comment section below.)
What to serve with chicken balti
Serve this deliciously easy Chicken Balti with plain basmati rice or any of the following:
- Classic Pilau Rice
- Multicoloured Pilau Rice
- Fruity Pilau Rice
- Mushroom Pilau Rice
- Easy Bombay Potatoes (Bombay Aloo)
- Homemade Naan Bread
(Shown here with Easy Indian-style Yellow Rice and Easy Homemade Peshwari Naan)
Easy Chicken Balti with Indian-Style Yellow Rice
What to drink with chicken balti
My favourite wine match for chicken balti is Sauvignon Blanc. While many white wines go well with chicken and spice, tomatoes really don’t work well with most white wines. Sauvignon Blanc is the one white wine that really works with tomatoes, as well as the chicken and spices.
I would go for a gutsy, flavour-packed Sauvignon Blanc from somewhere like New Zealand, South Africa or Chile. (This curry would be too much for a more delicate Loire Sauvignon Blanc, for example.)
The other way to go is with a medium bodied, fruity red like Merlot or Carmenere from Chile, Primitivo from Italy or Zinfandel from the USA.
Alternatively chicken balti goes very well with a crisp, refreshing lager – for example Kingfisher or Cobra.
Can you reheat chicken balti?
Absolutely! And, in fact, it’s one of those dishes that’s even better the next day, making it a great ‘make ahead’ option.
Place any leftover (or made ahead) Chicken Balti in an airtight container and pop it into the fridge, where it will keep for up to 3 days.
To reheat, simply tip the curry into a saucepan and heat until piping hot all the way through, adding a splash of water if it gets too dry.
Alternatively, you can reheat this curry in the microwave – again do make sure it is piping hot all the way through before serving.
Can you freeze chicken balti?
This Chicken Balti freezes beautifully. Simply cool the curry to room temperature and place it in a freezer-safe container. Pop the curry into the freezer, where it will keep for up to 1 month.
Defrost overnight in the fridge and reheat as above.
If you like this recipe…
…you might also like:
- Chicken Tikka Biryani
- Easy Peasy Butter Chicken
- Easy Beef Mince Curry (Keema Curry)
- Easy Lamb Dhansak
- Easy Prawn Tikka Masala
Easy Prawn Tikka Masala
Easy Chicken Balti
Ingredients
- 1 tablespoon olive oil
- 600 g chicken breast cut into bitesize pieces
- 1 onion sliced
- 2 cloves garlic crushed or grated
- 1 cm fresh ginger grated
- ½ teaspoon dried chilli flakes (or to taste, see Note 1)
- 1 teaspoon ground cumin
- 1 teaspoon ground coriander
- 1 teaspoon smoked paprika
- 2 teaspoons garam masala
- 400 g tin chopped tomatoes
- 200 ml water (use the empty tomato tin to measure this – ½ tin=200ml/7oz)
- 1 red (bell) pepper chopped into bitesize pieces
- 1 green (bell) pepper chopped into bitesize pieces
- Salt and pepper to taste
- 2 tablespoons fresh coriander (AKA cilantro) roughly chopped – plus extra for garnish
Instructions
- Place the oil in a large non-stick frying pan, over a high heat, for 1 minute.
- Add the chicken breast pieces and fry for 3 minutes, until nicely browned, but not quite fully cooked. Remove to a plate, together with all the juices.
- Turn the heat right down and place the pan back on the heat. Add the sliced onion and gently fry, stirring frequently, for 2 minutes.
- Add the garlic, ginger, chilli flakes, cumin, coriander, paprika and garam masala, and gently fry, stirring frequently, for 1 minute.
- Add the tinned tomatoes, water, chopped peppers, salt and pepper to the pan and stir.
- Turn the heat up high and bring to the boil. Then turn down and simmer for 10 minutes.
- After 10 minutes, add the part-cooked chicken pieces and cook on low for a further 10 minutes, checking occasionally to make sure it’s not getting dry. (If it gets too dry, simply add a splash more water and stir.)
- Finally, turn off the heat and stir in the fresh coriander (cilantro).
- Garnish with extra fresh coriander leaves and serve with pilau rice and naan bread.
Notes
- Balti is usually a medium hot curry. For my tastes, I find that ½ teaspoon of chilli flakes is about right, but it does depend a lot on your brand of chilli flakes and your own spice tolerance! If in doubt, try ¼ teaspoon to start with – you can always add more chilli later! Alternatively, if you know you can take the heat, you might like to start with 1 teaspoon chilli flakes.
- Suitable for freezing.
- Nutrition information is approximate and meant as a guideline only.
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Eric S says
A quick And easy recipe to follow which turned out really nice. We included a few more spaces to pimp it up a bit and it worked. Thank you very much for all your ideas. Keep up the good work.
Eb Gargano says
Aw – yay, I am delighted to hear that! Thank you for this lovely review and especially the 5* rating 😀
Howard says
Good morning. I haven’t tried you’re version of a Chicken Baltic just yet, but did wonder whether there was a specific reason why you opted to use chilli flakes instead of say, chilli powder or fresh green finger chillies ? Thanks
Eb Gargano says
Hi Howard, a very good question and actually there are quite a few reasons! First off, because using chilli flakes is quicker and easier than using fresh chillies. Second because it’s more reliable than using fresh chillies – I mean with fresh chillies you never quite know how hot they are going to be. As a lot of people who make my recipes are not very confident cooks, that reliability is really important. Thirdly, just to be consistent with myself. I try hard to keep to a fairly small number of herbs and spices, so that people who make a lot of my recipes don’t have to keep going out and buying a bunch of new spices all the time. I use chilli flakes in almost every recipe that requires some heat, just to stay consistent. And finally, there are often many types of chilli powder – and often they don’t just contain chilli. For example this one https://www.tesco.com/groceries/en-GB/products/251994901, from Tesco, contains chilli powder, cumin powder, salt, garlic powder and oregano. Chilli flakes is a much more ‘standard’ product – it’s pretty much always just dried crushed chillies. All that being said, if you want to make this with fresh chillies or chilli powder, then by all means do that! Hope that helps answer your question and enjoy making it! Eb 🙂