A chicken curry recipe? Why, yes! Butter Chicken (murgh makhani) is a chicken curry dish that originates from the Indian subcontinent…allegedly. Like many curry recipes, it is one of those that is kinda Westernized. You’ll probably never get this in India. But I think that every culture around the world cooks food in the same way.
Don’t believe me? Think about it. As a British person being British in Britland, it is quite clear that we all enjoy a Sunday roast. We particularly enjoy one with Turkey on Christmas Day, and our American friends will do the same for Thanksgiving.
What is a Sunday roast? Meat and gravy with some veg.
What’s gravy? A sauce designed to enhance the flavour of whatever you’re eating.
What’s a butter chicken curry? Meat in a sauce that is designed to enhance the flavour of the meal. Basically, meat in gravy.
We all eat meat in gravy, deal with it. Unless you’re vegetarian. You probably eat veg in a veggie gravy. But it amounts to the same thing. My point stands! 🙂
Anyway, the recipe I’m using is this one: Butter Chicken Recipe
This is Not Two Ingredients
You’d think that with “butter chicken” the clue would be in the name, but it turns out there is more in butter chicken than just butter and chicken. Who knew?
Grab a big bowl, chop up your chicken, lob it in the bowl with some yoghurt (plain, not strawberry) and some spices. Wallop it around a bit.
Bung it in the fridge and eat something else, coz it’s going to need some time to marinate.
Reading the recipe, I carefully (ahem) measured the required spices for the next step and put them on a plat in neat piles.
I didn’t have the right sort of onion, so I used a red onion. It’s probably not the best choice, but it tastes of onion, so…yeah.
I also opened a tin of tomatoes. Skill McGill.
Getting thoroughly bored and deciding that 20 minutes was indeed the equivalent of an overnight marinade session, I proceeded with the next step – sealing the spicy meat.
If you cook it long enough, you can eat it now. It’s well tasty. Don’t eat all of it, or your curry will end up more soup-like…all water and no meat. Although, the sauce is nice, so you might like that.
Chuck in the onions and garlic. And some spices.
Bury the whole thing in tomato.
Chuck it in a blender, put it back in the pan, and add cream and sugar. Well, I didn’t add sugar, I added granulated sweetener because sugar is the devil. My doctor told me that. There were some very strange paintings on the wall, and it seemed to be raining in one corner of the room. I’m not sure what the chains were for, but I believe that my doctor has a certificate of excellence from Hogwarts University, so it must be real. Oh, the meat should also be in by now, and the curry looks like this:
Let it simmer, lob it in a bowl, consume. Have it with rice, naan bread, poppadums, chips, whatever you like. It’s almost as good as one you get from a really nice takeaway, except you have to do all the work and wash up afterwards.
Seven out of five, would eat again, and also really enjoyed the chicken tikka masala recipe here.
Why no photos of the final product? Because I ate it. You’re welcome.
TL;DR – There’s more to butter chicken than butter and chicken. Who knew?