Murgh Musallam

MurgMusallam2
 I love my husband! He’s such a sweetheart and the biggest nerd ever..He spent the whole of last weekend sitting with is computer designing my blog. Well! I’ll admit that i said to him that I want a new beautiful face for my blog.. I mean why not? Of course I love cooking and writing and sharing my experiments with food but I too want it all to look beautiful. You know, what looks good chances are it will taste good too. 
So now I had to give something in return too..right?? Before you imagine anything yourself let me tell you what I did..I tried this awesome recipe. I made Murgh Musallam. Something he had been waiting eat again since last my my parents were visiting us and my dad made this for a special occasion.
Murgh musallam is one of the most famous dishes of the Lahori cuisine. Lahore earlier a part of India and now of Pakistan gave birth to this type of cooking and it roots go deep into imperial kitchen of the the Mughal Empire. As it is acknowledged for its excellent meat dishes, the cuisine of Lahore has also become popular amongst masses of Muslims in India, due to the fact that meat dishes in the Indian cuisine are typically restricted to a low extent on the basis of religious beliefs (vegetarianism). Hence the name Musallam might have come.
So this dish which is made with fried spices stuffed into a whole chicken (murga) got its name murgh musallam. Now you know that this dish has a history as rich and old as the Mughal Empire itself.
As deep and complex as it might sound its one of the easiest recipes of chicken I know. Being a queen of quick- fix meals and trying to aww my hubby I had to try this one.
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Ingredients:
1 whole chicken. We have a small family so I used a small Cornish hen weighing about a pound pound n a half  instead of a big 3-4 pounder chicken. You can double the amount of the ingredients according to the size of the chicken.
1/2 cup chopped onion
3-4 cloves garlic
1 tsp ginger paste
1/2 cup tomato pureed
1bsp tomato ketchup
1 tbsp garam masala powder ( In case you are intrested in the real deal you can make curry powder at home too. Nothing it the whole world can beat fresh garam masala powder made with whole spices made at home. Will post the method in my blog soon!)
1 tbsp coriander powder
1 tsp cyanne pepper
2 tbsp olive oil
Salt to taste

Oil a thick bottom pan.
Grind onion, ginger & garlic into a thick paste and pour it into the pan.. Fry this mixture until you kill all the water in it and then add the dry ingredients into it. Stir it for about a minute and the add the tomatoe puree and ketchup into it. You need to stir this mixture only untill you feel that its half way fried. It should’nt turn golden brown but there should not be any water in it either. Now add the salt and turn the heat off.
Let the masala cool for a little while and then you stuff it in the cavity of the whole chicken. Remaining paste rub it all over the body of the chicken. Then put a few slits all over the body of the chicken and rub the paste inside too. If you let it stay like that to marinate for about half an hr that would be awesome but if you don’t want to do that its ok.
Just heat the thick bottom pan, add a little oil and place the chicken on it. Cover the lid and turn the heat to the lowest. Let it cook on one side for about 10-15 mins and then flip it. Repeat the same untill the chicken is well cooked. To check if the chicken is cooked take a knife and cut the fleshy part, if its lightest pink to white in color that means the chicken is cooked.

You can serve this Murgh Musallam with any kind of Indian bread like naan or tandoori roti aur parathas or else it can be served with pulav or white steamed rice as well.

13 Comments

  1. “Remember that Bengali households still are known for their amazing food culture and this fact is known world-wide 🙂

    tanSEN was bengali my dear friend, so were a lot of other people! want to see the entire list as it stands today? so was subash chandra bose and sri aurobindo :)



    and i can name a million others and i am proud to say our greateness can be exerted beyond our national borders.
we are the fifth largest speakers!

    we bengalis have won pretty much every award in the world stage
you name it we have it and we are damn proud of what we have :)
its the only country in the world which took rebellion because it couldn’t speak its mother tongue and it won! and won so hard that the UN had to adopt that day as the international language day, which celebrates languages from all over the world.

    its the only country in the world which took rebellion because it couldn’t speak its mother tongue and it won! and won so hard that the UN had to adopt that day as the international language day, which celebrates languages from all over the world.

    did you know that the FAMOUS SEARS TOWER is architectured by another bengali?”

    by
    KAMONASISH AAYUSH MAZUMDAR
    MBA (IMT Ghaziabad)
    Bengaluru, Karnataka

  2. Hello Prerna,
    We love your recipes, especially when its on Murgh Musallam.
    These are so delicious.
    I have always looked at your blog for the various pictures and the way you write.Just Love it!
    You have shared some nice information about Murgh Musallam in this post.
    The points you mentioned are genuine and perfect.
    The content completely describes about the topic you wanted to portray with us.
    Thanks for sharing such valuable post.

    Regards
    VentairIndia Team

  3. Hi,

    The recipe looks delicious. Do we need to rub the masala on the whole chicken? Can we use chicken pieces instead of whole chicken? If so, do we rub it on the chicken pieces and then cook it?

    Thanks

  4. I completely agree with Jim…Ketchup goes really well…cooking food is about instincts and taste…not about some set processes…ketchup daal doge to mughlai nahi…anyways gr8 recp…

  5. Your Murgh Musallam was delicious. I made it for my family today, and there were rave reviews. Actually, the tomato ketchup was a nice touch. Anonymous may not be aware, but ketchup often is used in Asian cooking. Especially Thai. Thank you for your blog. I discovered it just today and know I’ll be returning again soon!

  6. Hi! I made this chicken today. A very easy process with some super delicious results I must say. Thank you so much for sharing.

    A small request – I see more sweet dishes on your blog than savory. Could u please please…please post more savory dishes? I would love to try some from your blog!

    Oh and I love all the pics on your blog. I rarely am able to achieve results as good as yours.

  7. Looks like it will taste good! And must say a beautiful blog 🙂

    By the way, just for the info, ‘Musallam’ in urdu means ‘whole’ or ‘complete’, as we’re using a whole chicken (murg) here. Though it is not a coincidence that Musallam comes from the same root as Islam or Muslim, which has similar connotations 🙂

  8. Sanjana that would totally work. Infact that’s how my mother makes it all the time. she says that spices always smell better if ground fresh.

  9. That’s a great recipe!
    How about I grind all the whole masalas instead of using curry powder? Will that work?

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