Chicken without oil
- 22 Jul, 2026
Eating healthy food is a good habit. I live in a PG, and the food is quite good here, but I think it lacks fiber and protein. So, I decided to start cooking some food myself. I’m not a good cook, but I’m trying to learn better things. So I thought, maybe I can start documenting them here. And today, I cooked chicken without any oil. I’m trying to eat healthy, and that’s why I’m preventing oil from touching my food.
Anyway, let’s get to the recipe.
Recipe
Marinate the chicken
First, I bought 450 grams of chicken from Licious. These were chicken thighs. Just after bringing them to my room, I started the process of marinating the chicken. For marination, I used 100 grams of dahi, around 20 grams of ginger-garlic paste, half a tablespoon of salt, one tablespoon of red chilli powder, half a tablespoon of turmeric, and two tablespoons of chicken masala. Mix everything together, cover it, and leave it for around an hour. Then, I took one whole onion and sliced it vertically.
Prepare the onions
Generally, we use oil to fry onions, but that’s where my recipe is different. What I do is take 200 ml of water, heat my electric skillet at the highest setting, and put the onions into the boiling water. Leave them there and give them a quick stir every 3–4 minutes. Do this until the water has completely evaporated. The onions will become soft and slightly brownish.
Cook chicken till they turn white
Once the onions are a little brown and ready, add the marinated chicken. Start stirring the chicken for around 4–5 minutes. The indication that the chicken is ready to be covered is that it will become white on the outside.
Cover the lid and firmly cook the chicken
Now the process becomes easy. Bring the heat down to medium or low, cover it with the lid, and let the chicken cook for 30 minutes. Just make sure the chicken is not getting stuck at the bottom, so give it a quick stir every 4–5 minutes. After this 30-minute period, open the lid. If there is some liquid or gravy left and it is too watery, bring the skillet back to the highest temperature and boil down the extra gravy.
You can eat the chicken as it is or have it with rotis or rice. I generally squeeze half a lemon over the chicken to make it taste fresh.