Butter Chicken (Murgh Makhani)
Butter chicken is one of the most popular and commonly known Indian dish. Considering it's called butter chicken, it doesn't really have as much butter in it as you’d think. The tomato gravy does have a lot of heavy cream it it, making this dish nice and rich. While there are a large amount of ingredients to make this, nothing in the recipe is out of the ordinary. You can find all of these ingredients at a normal grocery store.When selecting chicken for this dish, I used bone in chicken thighs. I decided to leave them whole. If you want white meat instead, use bone in chicken breasts cut into 3 pieces. If you want to be "that person", you can uses boneless skinless chicken. Don't be that person.
Servings: 4
Equipment
- food processor
Ingredients
Chicken Marinade
- 4 large bone in chicken thighs
- 4 garlic cloves minced
- 1 inch peeled ginger minced
- 1/3 cup whole milk plain yogurt
- 2 tsp smoked paprika
- 1 tsp garam masala
- 1 tsp ground coriander
- 1/2 tsp ground turmeric
- 1 tsp cayenne
- 1 tsp salt
Butter Chicken Gravy
- 5 garlic cloves minced
- 2 inch peeled ginger minced
- 1/2 medium onion diced
- 2 medium tomatoes
- 3 tbsp butter
- 1 tbsp paprika
- 2 tsp garam masala
- 1 tsp cayenne
- 1/4 tsp ground cloves
- 1/4 tsp ground cardamom
- 1 cup heavy cream
- 1 tsp salt
- 1 tbsp brown sugar
- juice of 1/2 a lemon
Instructions
Chicken Marinade
- Mix all of the marinade ingredients together.
- Peel back the skin of the chicken thighs, but not completely off. This will allow the marinade to penetrate the chicken meat and not just the skin.
- Pour the marinade over the chicken thighs. Let marinade for 24 hours.
Butter Chicken Gravy
- When ready to cook, turn you oven to broil and set your oven rack 6" away from the broiler. Pull the skin back over the chicken thighs. Place the thighs on a rack on a foil covered baking sheet.
- Broil for 5-6 minutes a side. The chicken should be browned on both sides, but not cooked through. Set aside. They will finish off in the butter gravy sauce.
- In a blender or food processor, add the garlic, ginger, onion, and tomatoes. Puree. Set aside.
- In a large sauté pan over medium high heat, melt the butter. Stir in the paprika, garam masala, cloves, cayenne, and cardamom. Cook for 1 minute.
- Add in the puree from the blender. Let simmer over low heat for 30 minutes.
- Stir in the heavy cream, salt and sugar.
- Add the chicken thighs back in. Simmer over medium heat for 15 minutes, or until chicken thighs are cooked through.
