Butter Chicken
The butter chicken recipe originates from Delhi and Mumbai restaurants, where it was made already in1950s, using leftovers of tandoor marinades. The simplified recipe presented here has been adapted from several sources, particularly from Camellia Panjab’s book, “The 50 Wonderful Indian Curries,” which was published in Estonian in 2008, when I did the first attempts to prepare Indian food. This food is common in many restaurants serving Indian food and home-made variant will be just as tasty as restaurant variant.
Preparation time: marinating time 1 h (optional) preparation time 20 min, stewing time 30-40 min
Level: moderately easy
Serves: four
Ingredients
900 g to 1 kg chicken meat (fillet or pieces with bones, I am using boneless chicken leg)
2 400ml can of chopped tomatoes
2 garlic cloves
500 ml Greek or Turkish yogurt
1 cm piece of fresh ginger
75 g butter
2/3 ts of grind chili
1/4 ts of grind coriander
½ ts of grind cumin
½ ts of garam masala
½ ts of grind fenugreek leaves
½ ts grind paprika
juice on half of lime
Salt
3-4 tbs oil
Preparation
1. Cut the chicken into chunks
2 Chop finely the garlic and the ginger, mix with yogurt, chili, garam masala, coriander, cumin.
3. Add chicken and mix. Let it marinate for an hour. If you have no time to wait, you can skip the marinating.
4. When the chicken is marinated, heat the oil in a thick bottom pot and pour the chicken with a marinade into a pot, and stew for 45 minutes. Stir from time to time and stew until the chicken is soft.
5. Add canned tomatoes, fenugreek, and paprika. Add lime juice.
6. Stew in medium heat for 15 min, stirring occasionally. Add butter, mix and serve with basmati rice.
Ready!
