Indian Butter Chicken

WeberWho · March 2019

I've been trying to get out of my food comfort zone and try some new dishes. I more or less stumbled into this recipe. It showed up in my YouTube feed. Let's do it!

I visited a couple different Indian grocery stores to find what I needed for the recipe. I must have called 5 different stores to find dried Fenugreek leaves. Lots of Fenugreek seed options but no dried Fenugreek leaves. No one seemed to carry it. That wasn't until my wife was smart enough to see if it was called something else. So she looked it up on her phone. It was. It's also known as Kaasori Methi. The employee was able to track a box down. That was way more work than I was expecting. It must not be all that popular in Indian dishes?

Here's a few pictures:

Ingredients.

Ready to be purred.

Ghee.

Browning the Puree.

Rest of ingredients.

Woked the chicken.

Tossed in chicken.

Added to rice.

I'm sure I butchered the traditional way of making this but I enjoyed trying something new. Full of flavor. I'm looking forward to trying other Indian dishes after making this. I'm looking forward to the leftovers this afternoon. Thanks for looking!

Battleborn · March 2019

That looks great! I have never really had the taste for Indian food, but I would tru that for sure.

ColtsFan · March 2019

Butter chicken is the bomb and that looks amazing! Well played

cookingdude555 · March 2019

Oh my that is incredible. Thanks for posting this.

gdenby · March 2019

Sure looks good. From what I know, dishes like that can vary from village to village, and cook to cook. So its probably close enough to traditional.

Let me suggest trying a "korma" dish. Instead of being butter based, the sauce usually has yogurt. That tends to offset hotter capsicum flavors, so one can have some zing w/o being incinerated.

Note, southern Indian styles tend to be Very Hot, so you might like to start w. more northerly recipes.

byrne092 · March 2019

Good stuff! Looks very tasty. Indian food is great

WeberWho · March 2019

Battleborn said:

That looks great! I have never really had the taste for Indian food, but I would tru that for sure.

Thanks! I'm not too familiar with it myself. I can only remember having it a few times. It never crosses my mind. I'm looking to try out some more dishes.

WeberWho · March 2019

ColtsFan said:

Butter chicken is the bomb and that looks amazing! Well played

Thanks! I never heard of it prior. Hard to go wrong with the word butter in the title!

WeberWho · March 2019

cookingdude555 said:

Oh my that is incredible. Thanks for posting this.

Thanks!

WeberWho · March 2019

gdenby said:

Sure looks good. From what I know, dishes like that can vary from village to village, and cook to cook. So its probably close enough to traditional.

Let me suggest trying a "korma" dish. Instead of being butter based, the sauce usually has yogurt. That tends to offset hotter capsicum flavors, so one can have some zing w/o being incinerated.

Note, southern Indian styles tend to be Very Hot, so you might like to start w. more northerly recipes.

Thanks for the explanation! That's interesting the more south you go the hotter the food gets. I'm a spice guy myself. I'll have to look for some southern Indian dishes. Great tip. Thanks!

WeberWho · March 2019

byrne092 said:

Good stuff! Looks very tasty. Indian food is great

Thank you! I'm looking forward to trying some other Indian dishes.

SaltySam · March 2019

Good lord. Just the wokked chicken looks amazing. I gotta try this

mEGG_My_Day · March 2019

That looks delicious!! Well done.

Thatgrimguy · March 2019

Amazing!! Looks great! You nailed that wok chicken!

WeberWho · March 2019

SaltySam said:

Good lord. Just the wokked chicken looks amazing. I gotta try this

Thanks SaltySam

WeberWho · March 2019

mEGG_My_Day said:

That looks delicious!! Well done.

Much appreciated

WeberWho · March 2019

Thatgrimguy said:

Amazing!! Looks great! You nailed that wok chicken!

Thanks much Thatgrimguy.

caliking · March 2019

Oh man,that does look tasty!!

I think of butter chicken as the (original) Indian version of chicken tikka masala. Or maybe it’s predecessor, in a less tomatoey way.

Butter chicken and CTM are supposed to be made with tandoori chicken, which adds great flavor in different ways, but the chicken is often overdone IMO. I've tried sort of "cold smoking" the chicken before adding to the sauce for a couple of different dishes, and have been very pleased with the addition of some smoke flavor, without the chicken being overdone.

CPARKTX · March 2019

Nice work!

WeberWho · March 2019

caliking said:

Oh man,that does look tasty!!

I think of butter chicken as the (original) Indian version of chicken tikka masala. Or maybe it’s predecessor, in a less tomatoey way.

Butter chicken and CTM are supposed to be made with tandoori chicken, which adds great flavor in different ways, but the chicken is often overdone IMO. I've tried sort of "cold smoking" the chicken before adding to the sauce for a couple of different dishes, and have been very pleased with the addition of some smoke flavor, without the chicken being overdone.

Thank you @Caliking. I appreciate the tip with the chicken. I really liked the flavor of the dish but the chicken needs a little help. I don't think doing the chicken in the wok helped any for flavor. I added some rub to the chicken but it wasn't very flavorful with the dish when all said and done.

I was also tempted to lightly smoke the dish after making the puree and before adding the chicken. I figured I better hold off this time around and learn what I'm actually doing first.

I'm going to have to give tandoori chicken a try. Maybe I'll smoke the tandoori chicken and add right before serving. Thanks for the suggestion with the chicken. Much appreciated!

WeberWho · March 2019

CPARKTX said:

Nice work!

Thank you CPARKTX

caliking · March 2019

If you go the tandoori chicken route, grill the chicken just shy of being done and add to the sauce. The chicken will finish cooking in the sauce, but the marinade will be cooked enough to not mess up the sauce.

If if you want more smoke flavor, then marinate the chicken with spices, but no yogurt or other liquid. Maybe salt, turmeric, cayenne, or whatever tickles your fancy. Cold smoke the chicken for a bit, then add to the sauce and finish cooking.

Lastly, cook this a day before you plan to eat it. Indian food tastes so much better if the flavours have some time to meld together. Especially if you cook it with the smoked chicken.

Bon apetit!

WeberWho · March 2019

caliking said:

If you go the tandoori chicken route, grill the chicken just shy of being done and add to the sauce. The chicken will finish cooking in the sauce, but the marinade will be cooked enough to not mess up the sauce.

If if you want more smoke flavor, then marinate the chicken with spices, but no yogurt or other liquid. Maybe salt, turmeric, cayenne, or whatever tickles your fancy. Cold smoke the chicken for a bit, then add to the sauce and finish cooking.

Lastly, cook this a day before you plan to eat it. Indian food tastes so much better if the flavours have some time to meld together. Especially if you cook it with the smoked chicken.

Bon apetit!

Great. I'll give that a try. Thanks!

marysvilleksegghead · March 2019

Nice looking cook Vincent!

WeberWho · March 2019

marysvilleksegghead said:

Nice looking cook Vincent!

Thanks!

dharley · March 2019

That look amazing! I've been wanting to try making an Indian dish called chicken tikki masala but some of the ingredients (spices) aren't available locally. There's always Amazon, but I'd hate to have $50 worth of Indian spices in the cupboard for a dish I may not even care for.

Again, that looks incredible. Well done.

HeavyG · March 2019

dharley said:

That look amazing! I've been wanting to try making an Indian dish called chicken tikki masala but some of the ingredients (spices) aren't available locally. There's always Amazon, but I'd hate to have $50 worth of Indian spices in the cupboard for a dish I may not even care for.

Again, that looks incredible. Well done.

Cook's Illustrated came out with a recipe many years ago that only uses readily available ingredients found in most grocery stores. It's the one I've used most of the time. It's behind a paywall on their website but here's a site that has it available. Might give that recipe a try as a starting point.

https://recipes.sparkpeople.com/recipe-detail.asp?recipe=552994

WeberWho · March 2019

dharley said:

That look amazing! I've been wanting to try making an Indian dish called chicken tikki masala but some of the ingredients (spices) aren't available locally. There's always Amazon, but I'd hate to have $50 worth of Indian spices in the cupboard for a dish I may not even care for.

Again, that looks incredible. Well done.

Thanks @dharley! I'm not sure if you have a local Indian grocery store near you but I was surprised how reasonable the prices were. It was under $8 for everything I needed for spices that I couldn't find at the local grocery store. The same goes for the local Asain grocery store. Great prices. Especially fresh vegetables.

It might be worth checking out if you have a few minutes and an Indian/Asain market around. You might be able to find all kinds of new stuff for other types of cooks. Kind of fun walking into something that is completely different than your normal routine. I've really enjoyed it personally.

dharley · March 2019

HeavyG said:

dharley said:

That look amazing! I've been wanting to try making an Indian dish called chicken tikki masala but some of the ingredients (spices) aren't available locally. There's always Amazon, but I'd hate to have $50 worth of Indian spices in the cupboard for a dish I may not even care for.

Again, that looks incredible. Well done.

Cook's Illustrated came out with a recipe many years ago that only uses readily available ingredients found in most grocery stores. It's the one I've used most of the time. It's behind a paywall on their website but here's a site that has it available. Might give that recipe a try as a starting point.

https://recipes.sparkpeople.com/recipe-detail.asp?recipe=552994

Thanks @HeavyG!!

The Cen-Tex Smoker · March 2019

caliking said:

Oh man,that does look tasty!!

I think of butter chicken as the (original) Indian version of chicken tikka masala. Or maybe it’s predecessor, in a less tomatoey way.

Butter chicken and CTM are supposed to be made with tandoori chicken, which adds great flavor in different ways, but the chicken is often overdone IMO. I've tried sort of "cold smoking" the chicken before adding to the sauce for a couple of different dishes, and have been very pleased with the addition of some smoke flavor, without the chicken being overdone.

We always undercook the chicken on skewers in the bge then let it finish in the sauce. Gets some nice smoke and color but helps keep it from over cooking

Aviator · March 2019

Butter chicken is actually a misnomer of sorts. Folks think it made with a lot of butter, hence the name.
But in reality its made with a paste of soaked cashews which adds a rich creamy buttery texture. I add very little fat which masks the flavors of the spices. Try this the next time.

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