Air Fryer Tandoori Chicken (Gluten-Free)

The tandoor is the whole story. It's a barrel of clay sunk in the ground or built up like a kiln, fired with charcoal until the walls glow, and across Punjab and Pakistan it's the heart of a certain kind of cooking: breads slapped to the inside, skewers lowered into the heat, and chicken — yogurt-marinated, spice-stained — cooked hard and fast so the outside chars while the inside stays juicy. The version most of the world knows was popularized at Moti Mahal in Delhi after Partition, and it set the template: deep red, smoky, tender to the bone.

You are not going to get a clay oven's live-fire smoke out of a countertop appliance, and it would be dishonest to pretend otherwise. What the air fryer does give you is the thing a tandoor is really prized for at home — a fast, ferocious dry heat that blisters the edges of a yogurt marinade and keeps the meat from drying out. Smoked paprika carries a little of the missing smoke; the yogurt does the tenderizing it always has. For anyone cooking gluten-free, this dish was already on your side — there's no wheat in real tandoori chicken, only spice, dairy, and heat.

One honest note on the dairy: the yogurt is not optional seasoning, it's the marinade's whole structure, so this one is firmly off the table for a dairy allergy. For everyone else, it's a weeknight that tastes like more effort than it is.

Use a basket roomy enough to keep the pieces apart and a fast thermometer so you pull them at 175°F, not a guess.