Lamb chops
लैम्ब चॉप्सبکرے کی چانپ
chāṅp
Lamb rib or loin chops, about 1 inch thick, trimmed of excess fat.
Its job: Tender, rich meat that loves high heat.
The tandoor: a 5,000-year-old oven
A tandoor is a tall, cylindrical clay oven, usually sunk into the ground or set in a brick-and-mud surround. A charcoal or wood fire burns at the bottom, and the thick clay walls soak up the heat until the inside of the oven is fiercely hot.
Breads like naan and tandoori roti are slapped straight onto the inner walls, where they puff and blister in a minute or two. Meat goes in on long metal skewers, cooked all at once by the glowing coals below, the radiant heat of the walls and the hot air rising through the oven. That combination is what gives tandoori food its smoky char outside and juicy inside.
Ovens of this kind go back thousands of years: remains of clay tandoors have been found at Indus Valley sites. For most of that history, though, the tandoor was a bread oven.
Tandoori chicken as we know it took shape in Peshawar in undivided Punjab, at a small restaurant called Moti Mahal, where Kundan Lal Gujral and his partners began cooking yogurt-marinated chicken in the bread tandoor. After Partition in 1947, Gujral, Kundan Lal Jaggi and Thakur Dass Magu moved to Delhi and reopened Moti Mahal in Daryaganj, and from there tandoori chicken spread around the world.
Most home kitchens don’t have a tandoor, so these recipes use a very hot oven, an air fryer or an Instant Pot air-fryer lid, with a final blast under the broiler for char.
