Chicken tikka masala

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Chicken tikka masala
Chicken tikka masala.jpg
Course Main course
Place of origin United Kingdom
Main ingredientsChicken, yogurt, tomato, onion
  • Wikibooks-logo-en-noslogan.svg Cookbook: Chicken tikka masala
  •   Commons-logo.svg Media: Chicken tikka masala

Chicken tikka masala is a curry consisting of roasted marinated chicken pieces (chicken tikka) in a creamy spiced sauce (masala). The origins of the dish are debated, with many believing it was created by South Asian cooks in Britain, possibly in Glasgow, Scotland. It is offered at restaurants around the world and is similar to butter chicken.

Contents

It is one of the most popular dishes in Britain, and in 2001 was described by the British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook as "a true British national dish". [1] The dish has been called inauthentic both by white Britons and by South Asians. Scholars and critics have debated the status of the dish, concluding variously that it has undergone an elaborate process of cultural interchange, and serves as symbol of Britain's multicultural society. Lizzie Collingham states that it feels quintessentially Indian despite its British origins.

Composition

Chicken tikka masala is a brightly coloured curry composed of chicken tikka, boneless chunks of chicken marinated in spices (masala) and yoghurt, roasted in an oven, and served in a creamy sauce. [2] [3] [4] A tomato and coriander leaf sauce is common, but there is no standard recipe: a 1998 survey in Britain found that among 48 recipes, the only common ingredient was chicken. [4] [5] It is served as a main course, often with rice or flatbread. [6] Chicken tikka masala is similar to butter chicken, both in the method of creation and appearance. [7]

Origins

Mughal ancestry

Mughal-style chicken tikka (dry, without masala sauce) as street food, Hyderabad Chicken tikka-IDL FOOD Street, Kukatpally-Hyderabad-DSC 0011.jpg.webp
Mughal-style chicken tikka (dry, without masala sauce) as street food, Hyderabad

The English word "tikka" is borrowed from Hindi टिक्का tikkā "small pieces of meat", itself a borrowing from Classical Persian تکه tikka, "pieces". [8] Chicken tikka was created in the reign of the Mughal Emperor Babur (r. 1526–1530) by marinating pieces of chicken meat in yoghurt and spices, and then grilling them in a tandoor oven. [9]

Adapted from an Indian dish

The origin of chicken tikka masala is not certain, but many sources attribute it to the South Asian community in Great Britain. [3] [10] [11] [12] It has been suggested that the dish is derived from butter chicken, a popular dish in the northern Indian subcontinent. The Multicultural Handbook of Food, Nutrition and Dietetics credits its creation to Bangladeshi migrant chefs in Britain in the 1960s, who at that time ran most of Britain's Indian restaurants. They developed several new inauthentic "Indian" dishes. [13] Rahul Verma, a food critic for The Hindu , [14] claimed that the dish has its origins in the Punjab region. [15]

Created in Glasgow

Another claim is that the dish originated in a restaurant in Glasgow, Scotland. [2] [16] This version recounts how a British Pakistani chef, Ali Ahmed Aslam, proprietor of the Shish Mahal restaurant in Glasgow from the 1960s, invented chicken tikka masala by improvising a sauce made from a tin of condensed tomato soup, and spices, to please a customer who wanted a sauce to accompany the dry chicken tikka meat. [17] [18] [11] [19]

The historians of ethnic food Peter and Colleen Grove discuss several claims about the origin of the dish. Peter Grove challenged the claim that Aslam had created the dish, on the grounds that the dish existed several years before his restaurant opened. Specifically, Sultan Ahmed Ansari, owner of Glasgow's Taj Mahal restaurant, stated that he had created the dish in the 1950s. [20]

Alternative claims

The London restaurant owner Iqbal Wahhab claims that he and Peter Grove fabricated the story of a chef using Campbell's tomato soup to create chicken tikka masala "to entertain journalists", and that in particular the use of the soup was "completely made up". [21] [22] [23] The British Indian businessman Gulam Noon is among the people who helped to popularise the dish, though he was not its inventor; he ran food product companies in Southall, in the west of London. [24]

The historians of ethnic food Peter and Colleen Grove discuss several claims about the origin of the dish, concluding that it "was most certainly invented in Britain, probably by a Bangladeshi chef." [25] They suggest that "the shape of things to come may have been a recipe for Shahi Chicken Masala in Mrs Balbir Singh's Indian Cookery published in 1961." [25] [26] Mrs Balbir Singh's recipe calls for onions fried in oil, with garlic, ginger, masala spices and tomatoes for the frying mixture for the chicken; cream, ground almonds, and yoghurt are added later in the cooking. [27]

Impact

Popularity

Chicken tikka masala is served in restaurants around the world. [28] By 2010, it was the most popular dish in British curry houses. [4] According to a 2012 survey of 2,000 people in Britain, it was the country's second-most popular foreign dish to cook, after Chinese stir fry. [29] The Oxford Companion to Food traces this popularity to 1983, when supermarkets began selling the dish as a chilled meal; [30] and as of 2016 it was the third most popular ready meal sold in UK supermarkets. [31] In 2025, the scholars of Indian food Bhaskar Sailesh and K. Karthikeyan called it "the world's best-recognized dish". [32] In 2009, efforts by Scottish parliamentarian Mohammed Sarwar to gain the Glasgow dish protected designation of origin status were however unsuccessful. [31]

In the United States, chicken tikka masala has in addition been sold as a taco filling by food trucks and as a pizza topping. [33] [34] In India, chicken tikka masala has been seen as a novelty dish in its own right, [35] and alongside that it has been used as a pizza topping by an Indian fast food chain. [36] BBC Good Food has proposed chicken tikka masala pizzas, using naan flatbreads topped with the curry mix, yoghurt, and mango chutney. [37]

Symbol of a multicultural society

Evolution of chicken tikka masala as a multicultural British dish. Chicken tikka was created in Mughal India using Persian marinading of meat in yoghurt and Central Asian tandoor roasting with Indian spices. In 20th century Britain, a sauce was added to meet the British liking for gravy with meat. The dish has evolved further to a taco filling in the US, and to a pizza topping in India. Tacos originated from Mexico. Pizzas originated from Italy. Evolution of Chicken Tikka Masala.svg
Evolution of chicken tikka masala as a multicultural British dish. Chicken tikka was created in Mughal India using Persian marinading of meat in yoghurt and Central Asian tandoor roasting with Indian spices. In 20th century Britain, a sauce was added to meet the British liking for gravy with meat. The dish has evolved further to a taco filling in the US, and to a pizza topping in India. Tacos originated from Mexico. Pizzas originated from Italy.

In 2001, the British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook mentioned the dish in a speech acclaiming the benefits of Britain's multiculturalism, declaring:

Chicken tikka masala is now a true British national dish, not only because it is the most popular, but because it is a perfect illustration of the way Britain absorbs and adapts external influences. Chicken tikka is an Indian dish. The masala sauce was added to satisfy the desire of British people to have their meat served in gravy. [1]

The social scientists Binod Baral and Basanta Adhikari carried out a statistical survey of people's views of the role of chicken tikka masala in the UK; the participants lived in the UK and had eaten in British Indian restaurants. They write that the dish "represents the fusion of British and Indian culinary traditions", and "serves as a symbol of multicultural society". [38] In their view, it has contributed to cultural exchange between the communities involved. [38]

The scholar of human geography Peter Jackson describes the evolution of chicken tikka masala as an elaborate process of cultural assimilation and rejection. The process resulted in the "indigenisation" of the original dish, giving it a distinctively British quality. Jackson specifically rejects the charge of cultural appropriation, which he considers a simplistic view of the interchanges involved. [4]

Cook's invocation of chicken tikka masala as a national dish and its description of the dish's origin as British have been widely debated. [42] [21] [43] [44] The speech has been criticised by Indian chefs and commentators as disrespectful to Indian cuisine, where in their view the dish is a "cognate of curries originating in South Asia" appropriated by "White British colonialists". [45] Such characterizations have in turn been criticised as relying on notions that racial groups can own recipes. [45] The social historian Panikos Panayi, noting the criticism of the speech, writes that Cook's central point, that immigration had influenced British food, was correct. [43]

Authenticity

The scholar of modern history Elizabeth Buettner writes that "popular dishes like chicken tikka masala were mocked as the antithesis of 'real' Indian food as often as they were celebrated as a 'British national dish'." Buettner noted that these attacks on British Indian restaurants came from both "middle-class white Britons and better-off South Asians". [46]

The Indian chef Raghavan Iyer notes the shock of "some food critics" at Cook's speech, writing of chicken tikka masala that they "deemed it 'inauthentic'" because of the addition of a sauce in Britain. [47] Iyer writes that "the authentic version of the dish had no sauce", [47] pointing to the Mughal creation of chicken tikka, but comments that all the same the dish "feels quintessentially Indian" to many people, despite its British origins. With the sauce, however, in his opinion "the dish took on a personality of its own in Britain", going on to be adopted around the world. [47]

Other scholars, such as the anthropologist Sidney Mintz, deny that there is such a thing as a national cuisine, since habits of cooking and of eating do not respect national borders. [48] Anupama Preetha and Anderleen Lazarus take chicken tikka masala as a prime exemplar of Mintz's statement; they note both that the dish was created across borders, and that its "ingredients and procedures" have been used to create numerous other dishes. [48]

The historian of food Lizzie Collingham discusses the question of the authenticity of Indian food in Britain, with respect to chicken tikka masala. She gives as an example the journalist and film-maker Jonathan Meades, who wrote in The Times that far from being a pleasing instance of how multicultural the British were, it showed how they could turn anything into an inedible and unappetising mess. [44] [49] Further, Collingham cites the British Bangladeshi businessman Iqbal Wahhab and journalist Emma Brockes's view that the problem with chicken tikka masala is that it is inauthentic. [44] [50] Collingham writes that what Indians eat is highly variable, being a product of their caste, regional origin, religion, and wealth. [44] From 1968, British Indian restaurants started to install Punjabi-style tandoor ovens, bringing the ability to prepare naan bread, and to roast meat on skewers and chicken tikka, paving the way for chicken tikka masala. [51]

The scholar of culture Stephen Fielding describes chicken tikka masala as the most popular of the British Bangladeshi restaurant dishes. He writes that in response, more upmarket Indian restaurants have sought to be more authentic, claiming to serve what Namita Panjabi, the owner of London's Chutney Mary restaurant, calls "individual, original recipes, not those that have been adulterated or standardised." [52] In the same vein, Fielding quotes Gordon Ramsay's praise for another London restaurant, Tamarind, distinguishing it as "a million miles from standard chicken tikka masala fare". [52] [53]

See also

References

  1. 1 2 Cook, Robin (19 April 2001). "Robin Cook's chicken tikka masala speech: Extracts from a speech by the foreign secretary to the Social Market Foundation in London". The Guardian .
  2. 1 2 Lloyd, J. and Mitchinson, J. The Book of General Ignorance . Faber & Faber, 2006
  3. 1 2 Siciliano-Rosen, Laura; Rogers, Kara. "Chicken tikka masala". Encyclopaedia Britannica. Retrieved 28 December 2020.
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 Jackson, Peter (2010). "A Cultural Politics of Curry: The Transnational Spaces of Contemporary Commodity Culture". In Lindner, Ulrike (ed.). Hybrid Cultures, Nervous States. Brill Rodopi. pp. 172–185. ISBN   978-90-420-3228-6.
  5. ↑ Webb, Andrew (2011). Food Britannia. Random House. p. 177. ISBN   978-1847946232 . Retrieved 3 June 2014.
  6. ↑ "What's in your Indian takeaway?" (PDF). Safe Food. September 2015. ISBN   978-1-905767-57-1 . Retrieved 15 December 2025. All three main courses provided high amounts of the adult GDA for salt: chicken jalfrezi, 86%; chicken tikka masala, 79%; and chicken korma, 50% ... Main-course portion sizes were found to provide enough for two people. The average portion of chicken tikka masala in this survey was 523g.
  7. ↑ Irwin, Heather (September 2019). "A Butter Chicken Vs. Tikka Masala Showdown at Cumin in Santa Rosa". Sonoma Magazine . Retrieved 11 April 2021.
  8. ↑ "tikka". Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary . Merriam-Webster.
  9. ↑ Iyer 2022, pp. 132–134.
  10. ↑ Dutt, Vijay (21 October 2007). "60 years of Chicken Tikka Masala". Hindustan Times . Retrieved 13 December 2021.
  11. 1 2 Ghosh, Bobby (19 January 2023). "How I Learned to Stop Hating and Respect Chicken Tikka Masala". Bloomberg News . Retrieved 26 February 2023.
  12. ↑ Taylor, Emma. "Most people have no clue chicken tikka masala isn't an Indian dish, according to a top Indian chef". Insider. Retrieved 13 December 2021.
  13. ↑ Thaker, Aruna; Barton, Arlene (2012). Multicultural Handbook of Food, Nutrition and Dietetics. John Wiley & Sons. p. 74. ISBN   9781405173582.
  14. ↑ "Author profile: Rahul Verma". The Hindu. Retrieved 13 May 2017.
  15. ↑ Nelson, Dean; Andrabi, Jalees (4 August 2009). "Chicken tikka masala debate grows as Indian chefs reprimand Scottish MPs over culinary origins". The Daily Telegraph . London. Retrieved 28 April 2010. Rahul Verma, Delhi's most authoritative expert on street food, said he first tasted the dish in 1971 and that its origins were in Punjab. "It's basically a Punjabi dish not more than 40-50 years old and must be an accidental discovery which has had periodical improvisations"
  16. ↑ "From Charles Mackintosh's waterproof to Dolly the sheep: 43 innovations Scotland has given the world". The Independent. 30 December 2016.
  17. ↑ "Glasgow 'invented' Tikka Masala". BBC News . 21 July 2009. Retrieved 19 May 2017. Mr Sarwar claimed the dish owed its origins to the culinary skills of Ali Ahmed Aslam, proprietor from 1964 of the Shish Mahal restaurant in Park Road in the west end of the city. He is said to have prepared a sauce using spices soaked in a tin of condensed tomato soup after a customer said his meal was too dry.
  18. 1 2 Godeau, Lucie (2 August 2009). "Chicken tikka masala claims its origins in Scotland". The Sydney Morning Herald . Agence France Presse . Retrieved 19 May 2017. 'Chicken tikka masala was invented in this restaurant, we used to make chicken tikka, and one day a customer said, "I'd take some sauce with that, this is a bit dry",' said Ahmed Aslam Ali, 64, founder of Shish Mahal. 'We thought we'd better cook the chicken with some sauce. So from here we cooked chicken tikka with the sauce that contains yogurt, cream, spices'.
  19. ↑ "Glaswegian who 'invented' chicken tikka masala dies". BBC News. 22 December 2022.
  20. ↑ Hay, Mark (5 May 2014). "Who Owns Chicken Tikka Masala?". Roads & Kingdoms. Retrieved 9 January 2023. 'Many chefs have claimed to have 'invented' chicken tikka masala, but it was certainly not Ali Ahmed Aslam of Shish Mahal,' says Grove. 'The restaurant did not open until the '60s and there was already a Glasgow claimant in the shape of Sultan Ahmed Ansari, who owned Taj Mahal and claimed to have invented it in the late '50s.'
  21. 1 2 Monroe, Jo (September 2005). Star of India: The Spicy Adventures of Curry. John Wiley & Sons. pp. 135–137. ISBN   978-0-470-09188-3 . Retrieved 29 November 2021. An enterprising chef then looked around for something to make a sauce from and found a tin of Campbell's condensed tomato soup. Hey presto! A legend had been born. The problem with this story is that — despite its status as a curry legend — it is completely invented. Cinnamon Club founder Iqbal Wahhab ...claims to have originated the story to entertain journalists in the days when he handled the marketing for several restaurants. 'That thing about the Campbell's soup was completely made up,' he confessed
  22. ↑ "Curry myths". Iqbal Wahhab . 5 December 2011. Archived from the original on 9 January 2023. Retrieved 9 January 2023.
  23. ↑ Gallacher, Stevie (9 June 2019). "Chicken Faker Masala: Restaurant boss admits inventing Scottish claim to famous dish". The Sunday Post . Retrieved 9 January 2023.
  24. ↑ "Lord Noon, businessman - obituary". The Daily Telegraph . 27 October 2015. Retrieved 27 October 2015.
  25. 1 2 Grove, Peter; Grove, Colleen (2008). "Is It or Isn't It? (The Chicken Tikka Masala Story)". Menu Magazine. Archived from the original on 27 November 2016. Retrieved 19 May 2017.
  26. ↑ Singh, Balbir (1961). Mrs Balbir Singh's Indian Cookery. Mills & Boon.
  27. ↑ Singh, Balbir. "Mrs Balbir Singh's Shahi Chicken Masala (The Original Chicken Tikka Masala?)". Mrs Balbir Singh . Retrieved 30 November 2025.
  28. ↑ Kumar, Rakesh (24 February 2007). "Tastes that travel". The Hindu . Chennai, India. Archived from the original on 29 June 2021. Retrieved 19 May 2017.
  29. ↑ "Stir-fry now Britain's most popular foreign dish". Daily Mirror . 21 January 2012.
  30. ↑ Davidson, Alan (2014). The Oxford Companion to Food (3rd ed.). Oxford University Press. Tikka. ISBN   9780199677337.
  31. 1 2 Williams, Victoria (2024). Food Cultures of Great Britain: Cuisine, Customs, and Issues. Bloomsbury Publishing. pp. 88–89. ISBN   978-1-4408-7741-4.
  32. ↑ Sailesh, Bhaskar; Karthikeyan, K. (2025). "Colonial encounters and culinary fusion: the evolution of Indian food through trade, empire, and globalization". Journal of Gastro Tourism. 3 (2): 77–90.
  33. 1 2 Glenn, Jane K. (2022). The joy of eating: a guide to food in modern pop culture. Bloomsbury Publishing. p. 238. ISBN   978-1-4408-6210-6. OCLC   1264746520.
  34. ↑ Vinh, Tan (19 August 2021). "Tandoori chicken on pizza? Our food critic explores Indian pizza options around Greater Seattle to pick his top 3". The Seattle Times . Retrieved 29 December 2025.
  35. ↑ Basu, Shrabani (2003). Curry: the Story of the Nation's Favourite Dish. Stroud, Gloucestershire: Sutton Publishing. p. xiii. ISBN   0-7509-3374-7.
  36. 1 2 Sen, Colleen Taylor (2004). Food Culture in India. Greenwood Publishing Group. p. 137. ISBN   0-313-32487-5.
  37. ↑ Godwin, Sophie (December 2017). "Chicken tikka masala pizzas". Good Food. Retrieved 13 January 2026.
  38. 1 2 3 Baral, Binod; Adhikari, Basanta Prasad (30 January 2024). "Exploring the Intersection of Multicultural Society and Chicken Tikka Masala in the U.K." OCEM Journal of Management, Technology & Social Sciences. 3 (1): 35–48. doi: 10.3126/ocemjmtss.v3i1.62223 . Retrieved 12 January 2026.
  39. ↑ Collingham 2006, pp. 27, 232.
  40. ↑ Boyer, Christopher R. (2014). "Planet Taco: A Global History of Mexican Food" . Hispanic American Historical Review. 94: 153–154. doi:10.1215/00182168-2390303 . Retrieved 22 July 2024.
  41. ↑ Helstosky, Carol (2008). Pizza: A Global History. London: Reaktion. pp. 21–22. ISBN   978-1-86189-391-8.
  42. ↑ Mannur, Anita (2009). Culinary Fictions: Food in South Asian Diasporic Culture. Temple University Press. p. 3. ISBN   978-1-4399-0077-2.
  43. 1 2 Panayi, Panikos (2010) [2008]. Spicing Up Britain. Reaktion Books. p. 174. ISBN   978-1-86189-658-2.
  44. 1 2 3 4 Collingham, Elizabeth M. (2006). "Chicken Tikka Masala: the quest for an authentic Indian meal". Curry: A Tale of Cooks and Conquerors . Oxford University Press. pp.  2–11. ISBN   0-19-517241-8.
  45. 1 2 McBride III, Lee A. (2018). "Racial Imperialism and Food Traditions". In Barnhill, Anne; Budolfson, Mark; Doggett, Tyler (eds.). The Oxford Handbook of Food Ethics. Oxford University Press. pp. 338–339. ISBN   978-0-19-937226-3.
  46. ↑ Buettner, Elizabeth (2009). "Chicken Tikka Masala, Flock Wallpaper, and "Real" Home Cooking: Assessing Britain's "Indian" Restaurant Traditions" . Food & History . 7 (2): 203–229. doi:10.1484/J.FOOD.1.100656 . Retrieved 12 January 2026.
  47. 1 2 3 Iyer, Raghavan (2022). On the Curry Trail: Chasing the Flavor That Seduced the World. New York: Workman Publishing. pp. 128, 132–134. ISBN   978-1523511211. OCLC   1374192575.
  48. 1 2 Preetha, Anupama Thampi; Lazarus, Anderleen Diana (21 May 2024). "Culinary Authenticity and Diaspora: A Preliminary Enquiry". Studies in Media and Communication. 12 (3): 50. doi: 10.11114/smc.v12i3.6874 . Retrieved 12 January 2026.
  49. ↑ Meades, Jonathan (21 April 2001). "Goodness Gracious!". The Times .
  50. ↑ Wahhab, Iqbal; Brockes, Emma (4 November 1999). "Spice ... the Final Frontier". The Guardian .
  51. ↑ Collingham 2006, pp. 231–232.
  52. 1 2 Fielding, Stephen A. (2014). "Currying Flavor: Authenticity, Cultural Capital, and the Rise of Indian Food in the United Kingdom". In Cobb, Russell (ed.). The Paradox of Authenticity in a Globalized World (PDF). Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 35–52. ISBN   978-1137353832.
  53. ↑ Ramsay, Gordon (11 June 2013). "Ramsay's Indian Takeaway". The Times .
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