While visiting Araku Valley in Andhra Pradesh state of India, I visited this place called Borra caves. During this visit I tried a local dish called bamboo chicken. This was first time when I heard of any such dish. There were plenty of small shop setups where local people were cooking chicken in bamboo pieces.
As we went closer to the caves we saw, Lot of folks were putting blocks of bamboo on fire. As we observed closely, all those bamboo blocks were filled with marinated chicken pieces and then both the sides of bamboo were a specific leaf which is easily available in the forest.
This is such a brilliant way to cook Chicken and that too without oil. Just put the marinated chicken in bamboo shoots and put these shoots on fire. Thereon experts know when to take these shoots out from the fireplace and how many times one needs to rotate the shoot, so that chicken is properly cooked.
Bamboo Chicken is traditional tribal cuisine of Araku valley in Andhra Pradesh state of India.
Skinless chicken is cut into small pieces and mixed in finely chopped onion/green-chillies along with various pastes of garlic, ginger with pinch of salt/spices/turmeric/red-chilli and some sort of fancy masala powders.
Photograph above shows one of the locals in Araku valley taking out the cooked chicken from Bamboo shoot. Notice the bundle of leaves in his other hand. This was used to cover the bamboo stick from the open side.
When asked & observed some of the locals who were cooking Bamboo Chicken, the process looks like -
- Marinate the chicken pieces with ingredients mentioned and keep it for an hour or so.
- Stuff this marinated stuff into the bamboo shoots
- Cover the bamboo shoot with leaves from open sides
- Roast the bamboo stick for around 40-50 mins on a balanced flame. (Neither too low nor too high)
- Take out the chicken and then garnish it with whatever you like :) - At Araku, I didn’t see any garnishing as such.
So if are around Araku Valley, try finding place to try Bamboo Chicken and if you visit Borra Caves, you can't avoid it. Personally I liked it but it was not something which was super impressive. But the fact that it's so soft and without any use of oil, it's incredible. Taste is certainly depends a lot on how a person if marinating the chicken.
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