Butter Chicken offers fully flavoured delicious chicken curry with delicate aromas to get you an experience of an exotic world of food aficionado. The small pieces of the chicken marinade in deliciously spiced yoghurt and cooked in an incredible creamy curry sauce make something that rivals any restaurant or take out!
Basic information
Spicy hot tomato sauce with butter and cream poured over soft chicken has been prepared in many different versions where people use many different combinations of spices and techniques but the simplified version of the Indian classic elates and satisfies all taste buds.
Up until partition, the main cooking in Delhi was vegetarian because the majority of the population was Hindu. Chicken was introduced in Indian cuisine after the Mughal invasion. It was part of Afghani -Peshawar cuisine, even as, with the meeting of different cultures, menus and recipes changed.
The recipe of Butter Chicken was, originally, made at the Moti Mahal by Kundan Lal Gujral in the 1950s in New Delhi, who used fewer spices than many of the latest versions of the recipe. Gujral operated the restaurant Moti Mahal and from one restaurant in Daryaganj, it became a global brand with restaurants from Uttar Pradesh to New Zealand, Saudi Arabia to Tanzania. For well over 60 years, the dish has been dominating the menus of restaurants around the world.
Moti Mahal’s Butter Chicken is one of the most acknowledged names in Indian cuisine. Traditionally, restaurants made butter chicken in a clay oven or tandoor. The small cut pieces of chicken were marinated in a mix of spices including cumin, turmeric, garlic and ginger, along with yoghurt and lemon juice and then a traditional tandoori chicken was mixed with an added makhani (or butter gravy). At restaurants, the recipe is prepared in buttery gravy with additional cream that gives the curry sauce a silky smooth rich texture.
The recent versions adopted by restaurants are known to add in copious amounts of butter and a range of herbs. The same recipe can be made with homemade curry sauce prepared with tomato, and a slew of aromatic spices all cooked in one pot to make a flavorful dinner ( or lunch) that’s just as good as the version at restaurants.
The most ubiquitous of the sub-continental tiffin dishes Indian butter chicken served with a bit of cilantro garnishing and mint-yoghurt to balance the heat goes well with roti (chapati) or chawal(jeera rice).