Easy Indian Butter Chicken Recipe

My Butter Chicken

Brian and I made Butter Chicken, and what a blast it was to prepare! I found the recipe for the classic Indian dish on allrecipes.com, and Brian and I proceeded to make it over the weekend.

We bought our ingredients the Friday before our cooking date; however, the garam masala and tandoori masala proved difficult to find for Brian, so he decided to make his own the morning of our date. :) Once he had finished making his masala, we began making the butter chicken, which consisted of two key segments: the preparation of the cream sauce and the baking of the tandoori-seasoned chicken.

Brian's Butter Chicken

We started with some butter, white onions, and garlic on the pan, which gave off a great aroma and a sign–to me anyway–that the recipe was going to turn out great. As I was expecting Pika and Jing to drop by for lunch, I doubled the recipe and ended up having to drop an entire block of butter into a sauce pan for the cream sauce... It was definitely a lot of butter, but I opted out of fiddling around with the proportions of the ingredients as it was my first attempt at the dish (and I essentially didn't want to screw it up).  

We then added some cooking cream, tomato sauce, and spices to the pan and let it simmer for half an hour while we worked on cutting up and seasoning the chicken with tandoori masala. Once the chicken was ready, we tossed it into the oven and let it bake for approximately 12 minutes. 

At some point, Jing and Pika arrived, which marked the first time that we had some hopefully unbiased guests for our dishes. They arrived while we were waiting for the chicken to bake, which was great because Pika could give us her opinion on something that she ate more frequently than we did. We jointly took the chicken out of the oven, sliced a piece, and realized that it was undercooked. We thus popped the pan back in the oven and added about five more minutes to its original baking time.

At last the butter chicken was done and with very delicious results! Brian got Enrique to try his butter chicken, and I got Jing and Pika to try mine. Much to our delight, our taste-testers said some very nice things about each dish. My parents and sister also got to try some and liked it. My dad likened it to Filipino coconut chicken, which was likely due to the use of cream in the sauce. 

Pika's only remark for my version was that I could add more garam masala next time. She then suggested that I fry the chicken with the onions instead of baking it or consider adding the onions to the chicken close to the end of its baking time. Personally I would scale down the sauce so that there is a more balanced sauce-to-chicken ratio, and I would also recommend reducing the butter and cream content in the dish (both Brian and I agree on this one!). 

All in all, our taste-testers, Brian, and I think that our first ever butter chicken attempt was a success! It was a joy to make, and we are both looking forward to making more Indian cuisine in the future. Plus I have enough garam masala to last me a lifetime; I might as well make use of it! :) Cheers.