Tandoori Turkey Leg

I am not a great cook. I don’t have the patience. I use my alchemy skills that help me get by in the lab, to help me feed myself each day without having to decide between speed and taste.

So I set myself a challenge when I bought a £2 turkey leg from ASDA. It weighed 700g, was a foot long and looked like it came straight out of The Flintstones.

I was elated but a bit worried about how to go about it, when I turned to father Google and mother YouTube for help. They both sang the same tune. Brine it for 24 hours.

I was not going to do it. It would mean having to wait for it patiently while it sat in the fridge for no reason for one whole day. But I needed an alternative to make it work without having to go through the messy brining process.

Why turkey leg then, since there is the much easier chicken option, which also makes excellent roast and grill? A month ago, I visited Dorset to celebrate a traditional Christmas with my landlord Bart and Helen. Although, I have had turkey before in steak and escalope forms, I was yet to have it off the bone, and in the traditional way. My parents told me turkey could be really dry and without much flavour. I took their word for it and stayed away from the big bird. I didn’t know that the turkey, when well-cooked by using the proper methods, could be a bird to contend with. Helen cooked a swell turkey, and it was a treat! More on that in a different post (a much delayed one, but coming soon).

I did not have the exotic salts or American seasoning, or even butter to cook the turkey leg. I just had yoghurt, tandoori and garam masala, extra hot chilli powder, and ginger and garlic pastes.

I did what any discerning mother would do in India - peeled off its skin and rubbed it with yoghurt and tandoori masala. I used the following for the marinade:
1. 1 tbsp full fat yoghurt
2. 1 tsp tandoori masala
3. 1 tsp garam masala
4. 1 tsp extra hot red chilli powder
5. 1tsp ginger-garlic paste
6. 1 tbsp of lime juice
7. Salt to taste

Then I did the unthinkable. Instead of immediately putting it into the oven as I am often accustomed to do when cooking chicken, I wrapped a cling-film onto the plastic container with the marinated turkey leg and placed in the fridge.

I came back to it after 24 hours.

I would do it right I thought, and decided a turkey leg of that size could take about a couple of hours. I prepared a basting liquid by adding some chilli powder and tandoori masala to sunflower oil.

I preheated the oven to 180°C (fan), and put the turkey leg in the middle on a grill rack. I basted and turned it over thrice, once every half an hour. After the third basting, I left it for fifteen minutes, instead of half an hour which would have made it a whole two hours, then took out the leg and let it rest for another ten minutes. Afterwards, this is what it looked like.



Enough said.

Well, not really, because now I must describe how it tasted, as an image does not do justice to the complex flavours and textures of a tandoori turkey leg. The yoghurt based marinade had formed a crisp coating, bursting with flavour. The inside was soft, and my nimble teeth easily tore off strands of meat from the bone. There was a bit of cartilage in the meat which I had to occasionally negotiate, but it felt like picking out bones from a large fish, and was no trouble at all!

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