Chicken · Slow cooker adaptation

Slow Cooker Chicken Tikka Traybake | Easy Curry

Chicken thighs skin-side down in a screaming hot tray, rendered fat pooling with jalfrezi paste, this is a traybake that does the heavy lifting for you. Free range chicken, green chillies, peppers, and a handful of bay leaves go in, the oven takes over, and you get restaurant-standard tikka without the fuss. Perfect for a weeknight or scaling up for a crowd.

R By Richard · Adapted from YouTube · Published 28 May 2026
⏱Prep 15 min
🍲Slow cook 5 hr (Low) / 3 hr (High)
🍽Serves 4
Quick & Easy Chicken Tikka Traybake

Source video by YouTube on YouTube. This recipe was adapted with strict source-fidelity rules and is marked for human review.

This is a vibrant, big-flavour chicken dish built around bone-in thighs, jalfrezi paste, peppers, garlic, green chillies and a secret hit of onion marmalade. The original is a 40 minute oven traybake, but the flavours translate beautifully to the slow cooker, giving you fall-apart succulent chicken with sticky, fragrant peppers. Browning the chicken skin first is essential to get that crispy, rendered flavour before everything goes into the pot. Serve with the easy mustard flatbread shown in the video to mop up the juices.

Slow cooker notes: Original is a 40 minute oven traybake. For the slow cooker: brown the chicken skin-side down first in a frying pan to render the fat and get colour (slow cookers don't crisp skin), then transfer everything to the slow cooker. No added liquid is needed because the peppers, onion marmalade and vinegar provide moisture and we want a 'dry' sticky curry, not a gravy. Lift the lid for the final 20 minutes on High if too much liquid has collected, to reduce and concentrate the sauce.

Ingredients

Main
  • olive oil, for browning
  • 4 thighsfree-range bone-in chicken thighs, skin on
  • sea salt, to season
  • black pepper, to season
  • 8 clovesgarlic cloves, left whole, skin on
  • 2 chilliesgreen chillies, halved and deseeded
  • jalfrezi curry paste
  • 8 leavesfresh bay leaves
  • mixed peppers, deseeded and torn into quarters
  • 2 tbsponion marmalade
  • 2 tbspred wine vinegar
To serve
  • natural yoghurt, dotted over (add late)
  • lemon juice, for the salad (add late)
Mustard flatbread
  • 2 mugsself-raising flour
  • 2 tspEnglish mustard
  • 2 pinchessea salt
  • water, enough to bring to a dough
  • oil or melted butter, for laminating

Method

  1. Heat a splash of olive oil in a frying pan over medium-high heat. Season the chicken thighs all over with salt and pepper, then place them skin side down in the hot oil to render the fat and crisp the skin.

    ~6 min

  2. While the chicken browns, prep the garlic (leave 8 cloves whole), halve and deseed the green chillies, and tear the peppers into quarters, discarding seeds and stalks.

    ~5 min

  3. Turn the chicken over to lightly colour the other side, then add a generous spoonful of jalfrezi paste to the pan. Move it around so it clings to the chicken and toasts briefly in the rendered fat.

    ~3 min

  4. Transfer the chicken and all the pan juices into the slow cooker. Tuck in the garlic cloves, chillies, bay leaves and peppers around the chicken.

    ~2 min

  5. Add 2 tablespoons of onion marmalade and 2 tablespoons of red wine vinegar. Gently mix everything together so the paste and marmalade coat the peppers.

    ~1 min

  6. Cover and cook on Low for 5 hours or High for 3 hours, until the chicken is tender and the peppers are soft and sticky.

    ~300 min

  7. For the flatbread, tip 2 mugs of self-raising flour into a bowl with 2 teaspoons of English mustard and 2 pinches of salt. Add water gradually, mixing with a fork, until you have a pliable, non-sticky dough. Knead briefly.

    ~4 min

  8. Roll the dough out thinly on a floured surface to roughly the size of a tea towel. Rub generously with oil, roll up into a log, oil again, then coil the log like a snail. Flatten with your hand and roll out again to fit a 26cm pan.

    ~5 min

  9. Heat a dry non-stick frying pan over medium-high heat. Cook the flatbread for 3 to 4 minutes on each side, until puffed and golden with crisp patches.

    ~8 min

  10. Brush the cooked bread with a little oil, then bash and tear it open to reveal the layers. Spoon the chicken and sticky peppers from the slow cooker onto plates, dot with yoghurt, and serve with the torn flatbread to scoop up the juices.

    ~2 min

Frequently asked

Do I really need to brown the chicken first?
Yes. The slow cooker won't crisp skin or render fat, so browning skin side down in a pan before transferring delivers the deep flavour and colour the finished dish relies on.
Can I use boneless chicken thighs?
You can, but the cook time should drop closer to 3 to 4 hours on Low. Bone-in skin-on thighs hold up better to slow cooking and give a richer result.
What if I can't find jalfrezi paste?
Any medium Indian curry paste works here, such as tikka masala or rogan josh. The dish gets its character from the paste plus the onion marmalade and vinegar combination.
Why is there no added liquid?
This is a 'dry' curry, not a gravy. The peppers, onion marmalade, vinegar and chicken juices create plenty of sticky sauce on their own. Adding stock or water would dilute the flavour.
Can I scale this up for a crowd?
Yes, the recipe scales well. For 8 or 12 portions, double or triple the ingredients, but make sure your slow cooker isn't more than two-thirds full. You may need to brown the chicken in batches.
Extraction notes (transparency): Olive oil for browning, the cooking fat/oil for the bread, and the yoghurt and lemon juice for serving had no stated quantities. Salt and pepper for seasoning the chicken not quantified. Recipe adapted from oven traybake to slow cooker; timings are converted estimates based on standard slow cooker behaviour for bone-in chicken thighs. | Second-pass critique flagged 9 fabricated and 1 quantified issues. See critique.issues for detail.