Tandoor ovens, perhaps best known for their role in cooking naan and Tandoori chicken and fish, are a mainstay in Indian and Pakistani homes and restaurants. They get extremely hot and are used to quickly cook food, often charring it a bit in the most pleasant of ways.

I don't have one in my tiny apartment kitchen, but that's never stopped me from making my own naan, and, feeling inspired by some delicious Pakistani food I had recently, I decided to put a tandoor spin on roast chicken.

As you know, I'm a big fan of roasting chicken at a very high heat, yielding a crisp skin and tender, juicy interior. Since this is in a similar vicinity as tandoor, cooking, I figured that if I applied Tandoori flavors to chicken legs before roasting them at a high heat, i I could get a similar result to traditional Tandoor chicken. Though the skin is typically removed before roasting in the case of Tandoori chicken (and you can feel free to do so if you prefer), I decided to leave it on, because as far as I am concerned, crispy chicken skin is the new bacon.

I started by making a marinade of spices (look for these in Indian specialty grocery stores like Vik's--they're amazingly cheap when you buy them in bulk!) and yogurt (regular whole milk yogurt, Greek yogurt, plain soy yogurt, or plain coconut milk yogurt all will work), which my chicken legs bathed in overnight (though you can still get delicious chicken if you only have an hour to marinate). The chicken and onions went for a nice long dip.

After tenderizing (the calcium in the yogurt activates enzymes in the meat which breaks down the protein, keeping it ultra-juicy after cooking), the chicken and onions get roasted, just like with regular baked chicken, and that's when the magic happens. The spices impart a deep, dark red color, the skin crisps, and the onions get all charred and roasty.

The lemons and cilantro aren't required, but they do add an amazing pop of freshness. Serve this one with homemade naan (I made my new favorite kind -- chickpea flour!), and a crisp green salad or slaw.