Butter Chicken, known as ‘murgh makhani’ in Urdu/Hindi was created in 1948 in India by a restaurant owner who wanted to prevent their leftover chicken tikkas from drying out and going to waste. His solution? A rich, buttery sauce to stir the chicken tikkas into. Boom, chicken tikkas saved and an attractive addition to his menu was born! He probably didn’t know what he had created would end up becoming one of the most famous Indian dishes in the world. The love for Butter Chicken has made its way across the globe and is now a favourite at many a British, American and European curry take-outs. It’s also adapted a lot…
🙉 The problem with Butter Chicken
Here’s the deal. The Butter Chickens you may have tried at Indian takeout joints and perhaps from recipes online are quite different to traditional South Asian flavour. Butter Chicken has evolved a lot to cater to non-South Asian taste buds. In other words, it’s become sweet, coconutty and sickeningly rich. I’ve had a few Butter Chickens and each time I was left confused, underwhelmed and just plain disappointed. (More like internally screaming ‘What in the name of sweet creamy orange fenugreek-y madness is this?!?!?!?!’) I’m really sorry if that’s the Butter Chicken you enjoy. This recipe isn’t for you if you like the sweet, richer than a tax-evading millionaire, coconutty Butter Chicken.
🍛 This Butter Chicken recipe is…
the perfect balance of creamy, buttery goodness without becoming overly rich made using a simple array of spices which aren’t overpowering and allow the butter and cream to shine through in no way boring, despite the simple variety of spices! made using fresh ingredients that really pack a punch doesn’t leave you feeling heavy and sick afterwards
This recipe is just such a winner. I am so excited to share it with you all! I’ve never been a fan of Butter Chicken, but I’ve now discovered that was only because I hadn’t had the right one 😁
🔪 Method
You can watch the YouTube video for this recipe below. Alternatively, you can read the instructions under the video. As always, full ingredients list + instructions are at the bottom of this post. We start off by marinating some chicken pieces (I prefer thigh) cut into bite-sized pieces with a mixture of yogurt, lemon juice, salt, red chilli powder, turmeric, coriander powder and garam masala. Allow this to marinate for about an hour. Once the marination time is up, we’re going to either grill, bake, pan-fry or air fry the chicken till it’s charred on the outside. I chose to air-fry (took me 15 minutes on 200c to get a char), and any other method will take about the same time too. I didn’t get a picture of the char but you can take a look at the recipe video to see how it looks! The char is the objective here. Next up, we work on the sauce. In a deep pot, add a mixture of oil and butter. Add cumin seeds, chopped onion and garlic to this and sauté it until it’s fragrant and just about turning golden around the edges - do NOT brown them! We want to keep the onions as lightly coloured as possible for this recipe. Add in spices (salt, paprika, coriander powder) and chopped green chilli and give them a toss for a 2-3 minutes. Add in chopped tomatoes and stir them through. Then add ¾ cups/180ml water, turn the heat to low and put the lid on. Allow this to cook for 5-8 minutes, until the tomatoes just soften. Once the tomatoes have softened, take the lid off and using an immersion blender, blend the mixture into as smooth a paste as you can get it. To this, we’re going to add double cream. Very gently bring this to a simmer over a medium heat. Once at a gentle simmer, add the cooked chicken you prepared earlier. Stir it in and allow this to simmer with the sauce covered with a lid over a low heat for 5 minutes. Stir in dried fenugreek and chopped coriander. Finally, just before serving, finish off by stirring in some butter. If you’re having this later, hold off this till just before serving. And we’re done!
🙋🏼♀️ Tips and helpful information
Fresh tomatoes > tinned tomatoes for LIFE. When I was developing this recipe, I used a variety of tinned, puree and fresh including combinations of the three. Honestly, nothing beats fresh and I will die on this hill. This recipe uses a very minimal number of ingredients and I find this works best. Butter and cream are pretty heavy, rich ingredients and I feel like Butter Chicken becomes uncomfortably heavy and rich with aromatic whole spices. I’ve used mild paprika in the sauce - this is mostly for colour, but it does also add its own flavour but not really a hot one. There’s green chilli in the sauce and red chilli powder in the chicken marinade to provide a small bit of heat. If you don’t have paprika, you can also use Kashmiri red chilli or deghi mirch. This isn’t a spicy recipe - I’d give this a 3/10 on the heat barometer. This makes it perfect for kids, or serving at dawats as the ‘mild’ option. If you’d like some more heat, I’d advise you to add some green chilli into the sauce.
❓ Frequently asked questions
🍽️ What to serve with Butter Chicken
Butter Chicken goes well served alongside Roghni Naan or rice. A zesty salad to cut through the richness works great with this, too. I can show you how I make perfect basmati rice that would go perfect with this Butter Chicken here!
📋 Recipe
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