Granny’s Guyanese Curry Chicken

August 29, 2026

There are certain foods that take you somewhere before you even take the first bite. For me, curry chicken and roti will always take me straight back to my granny’s kitchen.

I grew up loving every time Granny would make curry and roti for us and for Guyanese people, curry and roti is almost like what fried chicken is to Southern Americans. It’s one of our North Star meals. The kind of food that everybody knows, everybody has a version of and everybody has a memory attached to.

I remember when I was in college, friends and I went to Six Flags and my granny made us a whole heap of curry chicken and roti to take with us. I still don’t know how that food stayed hot for so long, but I’ll never forget opening up that container and tasting that flaky, soft roti with that well seasoned curry chicken.

And for birthdays? We already knew what time it was. Whenever somebody’s birthday rolled around in the family, we got excited because we knew Granny was making curry chicken and roti. It was almost like the curry and roti was the birthday cake. I honestly don’t think we were as excited about the birthday cake as we were about that curry chicken and roti.

I always watched Granny while she cooked in the kitchen, I’ve always enjoyed the process. This is the kind of cooking I grew up learning. I learned to cook without measuring cups and spoons. I learned by looking, making mental notes, paying attention to the pot and eventually trusting my own hand and heart.

So for this recipe, I’m doing something a little different, I’m sharing this recipe the way I honestly prefer sharing all recipes. I’m listing the ingredients, but I’m not giving you a bunch of measurements. I truly believe that’s what made the recipes we grew up on so damn good, everything wasn’t always measured. Recipes were guides and they should continue to be guides.

And with this one, my hope and Granny’s hope and the hope of all the Guyanese and Caribbean women who came before us is that you learn to trust yourself while you cook. Trust your taste buds, trust your hands, trust your pot.

Maybe you like yours a little saltier, maybe you want more pepper, more spice or a little more gravy. That’s okay. This is Granny’s curry chicken recipe and after 90 years and countless pots of curry, I think she knows a thing or two.

Ingredients

For Seasoning Chicken

About 6 large skinless chicken leg quarters, cut between the joints and then chopped into another 2–3 pieces, depending on size
Fresh garlic, minced
Fresh thyme
Dash of Dacy Adobo Mojo
Dash of Dacy Garlic Onion Herb
A little Dash of Dacy Caribbean Jerk
Black pepper
Chicken bouillon
Fresh Ginger or ginger powder
Green seasoning
Lime, lemon or vinegar for cleaning meat

The Next Day Cooking: For the pot

Neutral oil of choice
The seasoned chicken
½ Red onion, diced
½ Green bell pepper, diced
½ Red bell pepper, diced
A little more Fresh garlic, minced
Fresh thyme
3 Wiri wiri peppers
All-purpose seasoning
Guyanese or Indian curry powder
A second curry powder
Chicken stock
Baby yellow potatoes
Accent, to taste

Method

1. Cutting, Cleaning and Seasoning

In Guyanese cooking, we generally don’t cook extra big, whole pieces of meat when we’re making curry. The chicken or meat gets cut into smaller pieces so the seasoning can get all through the meat and the curry can really cook into it.

Begin cleaning the chicken, we remove the skin, trim away all the fat and cut out any excess impurities. We don’t like skin on our chicken when making curry, so we use skinless chicken quarters.

For the leg quarters, cut between the joints, now you have a drumstick and a thigh. Cut the drumstick in half and cut the thigh into up to three pieces if it’s large. This is essentially what we mean when we talk about chicken being cut up for stews or curry. You can cut chicken leg quarters or a whole chicken but for people who aren’t used to cutting up a whole chicken all the time chicken leg quarters might be easiest best.

Clean the chicken with vinegar, fresh lime or lemon juice. Squeeze the juice over the pieces and rub them well, making sure to clean away any impurities. Rinse the chicken thoroughly, then repeat the process if needed. Listen, this is how we do it culturally. If you want to skip this step because of CDC guidance, that’s on you.

Once the chicken is cleaned and rinsed, pat dry the chicken with paper towel. Season it well with the minced garlic and fresh thyme. Add the Dash of Dacy Adobo Mojo, Garlic Onion Herb, a little Caribbean Jerk, black pepper, chicken bouillon, ginger and green seasoning. Notice, granny prefers not to add any curry powder at this point. A lot of other recipes add curry seasoning at this point, I’ve done the same on many occasions but it is not my Granny’s preference.

Granny seasons the chicken well when I say season it well, it doesn’t mean that the chicken has to look heavily seasoned. That’s one of the things I learned from Granny, she trusts the power of her hand.

She doesn’t start by overpowering the meat with seasoning because she knows the flavor is going to continue developing throughout the cooking process. The chicken is lightly seasoned at this point and it is well seasoned at the same time.

Mix everything together with your hands. Get that seasoning all over the chicken then cover and refrigerate for at least 2 hours. Granny left hers overnight and honestly, overnight is my preference when I have the time.

2. The Next Day: Let’s Cook

Remove seasoned chicken from fridge, allow it to sit out at room temperature for at least 30 minutes. Dice all of the peppers and aromatics. The wiri wiri peppers are where you can adjust to your own heat tolerance. Three gives the pot some spice but you know your mouth better than anybody.

In a large Dutch pot, add enough neutral oil of your choice to lightly cover the bottom of the pot and bring it to medium heat. Add the onion and sauté for about 2 minutes. Then add the garlic and peppers and sauté for another minute or so.

Season the aromatics with a little all purpose seasoning, that’s it because the flavor is starting from the very beginning. We’re building flavor over time and this is something I really noticed about Granny’s cooking.

That basic but mighty seasoning blend that went onto the chicken is the foundation I see in so many Guyanese chicken dishes. Think about Chicken and Bora, Chicken and Cabbage, Curry Chicken or Stew Chicken. Before we get to the actual cooking, we’re always seasoning the meat with those simple but powerful flavors that have time to saturate the chicken before the heat ever hits it.

After the aromatics have sautéed for another minute or so, remove them from the pot and set them aside.

3. Add the Chicken

Keep the pot over medium heat and add the seasoned chicken. Granny doesn’t rush the pot. This might be one of my favorite things I’ve learned from watching her cook. Curry chicken doesn’t necessarily take a long time to cook maybe 30 minutes once you’re actually cooking.

But Granny doesn’t rush it, her pot is never rushed. The stove is never screaming on high and flavor is never forced, It’s developed overtime. She lets the chicken cook slowly for about 15 minutes. Put the lid on and leave it alone. Not constantly lifting the lid, no rushing to see what’s happening.

Inside that pot, the chicken is doing exactly what it’s supposed to do cooking, releasing its own juices and building flavor without sticking or burning.

After about 15 minutes, lift the lid. This is where something my great grandmother call “wild wata” comes into play. Granny says her mother used to call the liquid that comes from a freshly killed chicken wild water, the natural water and juices released from the chicken.

Some of that liquid will evaporate as the chicken cooks you should still have a good amount left in the pot. You’re looking for the liquid to come roughly halfway up the chicken, not enough to cover it. We’re not boiling this chicken, we’re building a curry. The chicken may look a little grayish at this point but trust the process.

4. Now Come the Curry Powders

At this point, add the sautéed aromatics back into the pot along with some fresh thyme stems. Then add your curry powders and yes, Granny uses more than one.

I had actually run out of Granny’s favorite curry powder, Indi Special Madras Guyanese Curry, so for this pot we used her second favorite Chief Curry Powder, along with one of my favorites Betapac Curry Powder.

Granny mixed the Chief and Betapac together and sprinkled a generous amount of both into the pot. According to Granny, even when she uses her favorite curry powder, she still likes to mix at least two curry blends.

That’s her way and I generally do the same when making curry recipes as well. For me, one curry just doesn’t have it all.

And about “burning” the curry…This is where Granny and a lot of traditional Caribbean curry methods don’t necessarily agree. It’s very common to cook or “burn” or “bloom” your curry powder in oil before adding the meat.

Granny has never preferred that method. She adds the curry powder during the cooking process instead. That does a good amount of the work for you. Notice when Granny seasoned the chicken the day before, she didn’t add curry powder. The curry powder comes later, during the cooking process.

And when I think about it, my belly has never run me into trouble after eating Granny’s curry, so I’m going to let the 90 year old curry expert have this one.

There are already bitter and earthy notes naturally present in many curry powders. Granny feels that burning the curry can sometimes heighten those bitter notes, so she’d rather allow the curry to develop slowly in the pot. To each their own, I’m just telling you how Granny does it and she ain’t never had anyone complain about her curry chicken.

5. Add the Stock & Potatoes

Granny also adds about 1 cup of chicken stock. In our house, we keep homemade or leftover stock in the freezer in 1 cup, 2 cup and 4 cup deli containers. Instead of reaching for water when we’re making a stew, soup or curry, we defrost the amount of stock we need and add it to the pot.

It adds more flavor. Why add water when you can add stock? Then come the potatoes. We peeled baby yellow potatoes, cut them in half and added them directly to the curry.

And let me tell you something about those potatoes…Sometimes you add potatoes because you love potatoes and sometimes you add potatoes because you need to stretch the pot.

When you have a whole bunch of people to feed and not quite enough meat, you better add some potatoes! That’s something I learned from both my mother and my granny. Guyanese cooking has always known how to make a pot feed everybody.

6. Keep the heat on medium.

Stir everything together making sure the chicken, curry, potatoes, aromatics and thyme are all getting acquainted. Next, Granny does something that every cook should do: She tastes her pot, because she knows that seasoning isn’t finished just because you’ve added the ingredients.

You have to taste it, adjust the flavors and trust your tongue. Like my mom and many other Guyanese cooks, Granny adds a little Accent, to enhance the flavor of the pot. Then let the curry simmer uncovered for about 5 minutes.

After that, put the lid back on and continue simmering over medium heat for another 20 minutes or so or until the chicken is tender and the potatoes are cooked through.

7. Granny’s Potato Trick

Here’s one of my favorite tips I’ve learned from Granny. If your curry gravy isn’t as thick as you’d like it to be, take 1–2 pieces of potato from the pot and break them up right into the gravy.

The potato naturally thickens the curry, no cornstarch slurry needed , no complicated trick just potato. Once the chicken is tender, the potatoes are soft and the gravy tastes the way you want it to, turn off the heat.

Put the lid back on and let that pot sit, covered with the heat off. To me, this is the curry version of letting your steak rest. The cooking may be finished but the flavor isn’t done settling. Granny said we should always give it a little time and then lift that lid.

Somehow, Granny had done it again. That grayish looking chicken we saw earlier is no longer present, instead the yellow curry color had come.The curry worked its way into the chicken and the gravy developed that beautiful curry color Granny knew would eventually have.

After watching this pot come together, Granny taught me something new about curry… Curry will always be curry! Whether you burn your curry powder first, whether you season the meat with curry powder or whether you add the curry powder later and let it develop slowly into the meat and gravy.

The method may change but if you take your time, keep your heat reasonable and let the pot do what it needs to do, that curry color and flavor will come.

This is Granny’s way and after 90 years of cooking, feeding people and making memories around her kitchen table, I’m always listening. Granny’s Guyanese curry chicken is top 3 and it certainly ain’t number 3!

From Our Kitchen to Yours

Enjoy!

Curry Chicken Recipe Video Here