Butter Chicken

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Butter chicken or murgh makhani is an Indian chicken dish in a mild curry sauce, whose roots lay in Punjabi cuisine.

I first remember having butter chicken when I was in Australia over ten years ago. I was visiting a boyfriend at the time and we were coming home from a night out and we were famished. There was a curry shop on Oxford Street en route between the bars and the QVB, where we would pick up our late night bus. There were about five to seven curries available. Butter chicken didn't look like what I thought butter chicken would, but I thought that it smells fantastic.  I ordered it and the server ladled a healthy portion over fresh, hot jasmine rice.  I remember it wasn't just the alcohol or the hunger talking; this dish tasted amazing. 

The final portion from my Pre-Christmas batch, see below
When I see it on Indian buffets (though it's not really a common buffet dish), I am excited and I always sample it. About a year ago, I noticed that a friend over in the UK would make off-hand comments about having butter chicken when we would catch up, because it's a very popular dish over there. Through this power of suggestion, I started to crave butter chicken. Meanwhile across the pond, one can readily get frozen entrees of butter chicken in a local supermarket. Due to the empire, Indian foods aren't exotic to the Brits. It's ubiquitous there. Here in the States, there are only two opinions: go to an Indian restaurant or learn to make.

And I love to make it. I do it a little more complicated than my original source recipe.  How I mostly complicate the dish is that I don’t use boneless, skinless chicken thighs like the source recipe calls for.  I love chicken meat on the bone because the flavor is that more rich.  If I had a cleaver, I would just skin the thighs and then hack them into pieces – bones and all. However what I do, is remove as much meat as possible but leave some on the bone and add all the pieces in.  I try to serve each serving with one of the thigh bones to enjoy how flavorful the on-the-bone meat is. It's a little trying, messy and slick, but it's, in the end, worth it. 

Finally, remember to warn people about the cardamom pods if you don't remove them.  I always forget that they are there at least once a batch. I bite into it and, damn, those things bit back.

Ingredients:

  • 2 T butter
  • 2 T vegetable oil
  • 1 onion, diced
  • 3 cloves garlic, minced
  • 8 large chicken thighs, skin removed and cut into bite-sized pieces from the bone.
  • 2 t curry powder
  • 1 T curry paste (I’ve used anything from a cube of S&B GoldenCurry, to Patak’s, to some red, green and panang curries from Thailand)
  • 2 t tandoori masala (I have a local Indian and Pakistani market where I can get them for $2 each, but if you can't find them, I'd bet Amazon.com would have both masalas available.)
  • 1 t garam masala
  • 6 oz tomato paste
  • 1 cup low-fat plain yogurt
  • 14 oz coconut milk (1 can)
  • 15 green cardamom pods
  • salt to taste

Directions:

  1. Melt the butter and vegetable oil in a large skillet over medium heat.
  2. Stir in the onion, garlic and chicken; cook and stir until the onion has softened and turned translucent, about 5-10 minutes.
  3. Stir in the curry powder, curry paste, tandoori masala, garam masala and tomato paste until the tomato paste is well incorporated.
  4. Add in coconut milk and yogurt, and mix well
  5. Stir in the cardamom pods and season to taste with salt.
  6. Bring to a boil and immediate reduce to a simmer and let cook for at least 1 hour; cook for longer to reduce the sauce to a thicker consistency.
  7. Try your best to remove the cardamom pods before serving.

This year, I added this dish to my parents' Christmas food gifts. For about a decade, I started to give the gift of chili to my parents. (I was poor and didn't have money for a lot of Christmas gifts; so I made some of my chili that would last me for a while and I scoped up and froze two big portions to give to mom and dad. Voilà, a Christmas tradition.) Before my trek to San Francisco, I made a big batch of butter chicken since I was craving it. Yet I needed to portion it out and freeze it since I wouldn't have finished it in time before my trip. I love my parents; I love my butter chicken. I figured no better way to show them I care and gift them another of my most favorite dishes.

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