Butter Chicken

What Butter Chicken is

Butter chicken is chicken cooked twice: marinated in yoghurt and spices and charred first, then simmered in a smooth tomato gravy enriched with butter and cream. The flavour is mild, slightly sweet and heavy on dairy, with the smoke from the first cooking still detectable underneath.

Dietary: Contains dairyGluten-free if served with rice

Allergens: DairyTree nuts (cashew)

Where it comes from

The dish was invented in Delhi in the 1950s at Moti Mahal, reportedly to use leftover tandoori chicken by simmering it in a tomato and butter gravy rather than discarding it. That origin explains its structure: the two cooking stages are not a refinement, they are the whole recipe. It became the template for how much of the world imagines Indian food, which is worth knowing — it is a modern restaurant dish, not an ancient one.

How to eat it

Eat it with naan rather than rice if you want the traditional pairing — the bread is used to scoop, holding the gravy better than a spoon does. Tear a piece of naan, fold it, and use it to pick up a piece of chicken with sauce. If you are eating with rice, spoon the gravy over only the portion of rice you are about to eat, so the rest stays dry and separate.

Goes well with

• Garlic naan
• Plain basmati rice
• A cucumber raita to cut the dairy richness

Ingredients

• 700 g Boneless chicken thigh
• 150 g Thick yoghurt — For the marinade; it tenderises and helps the char.
• 2 tbsp Ginger-garlic paste
• 2 tsp Kashmiri chilli powder — Colour without much heat.
• 2 tsp Garam masala
• 700 g Tomatoes — Ripe; tinned works better than underripe fresh.
• 80 g Butter
• 120 ml Double cream
• 40 g Cashews — Blended in, they thicken the gravy without flour.
• 1 tbsp Kasuri methi (dried fenugreek leaf) — Crushed in at the end; the signature aroma.
• 1 tsp Sugar — Balances the tomato's acidity.
• to taste Salt

Spices in this dish

• Garam Masala — Warm, sweet-savory and deeply fragrant rather than hot — garam masala carries al…
• Ginger-Garlic — Sharp, pungent and almost unpleasantly raw straight from the blender — the 'raw …
• Fenugreek — The whole seed is intensely bitter raw and easily scorched into acrid bitterness…

How to cook it

1. 1Marinate the chicken

   Mix the yoghurt, ginger-garlic paste, chilli powder, half the garam masala and salt, coat the chicken and refrigerate for at least four hours, ideally overnight. The acid in the yoghurt does the tenderising; rushing this stage is why home versions often come out tough.

2. 2Char it hard and fast

   Grill, broil or pan-sear the chicken at high heat until the edges blacken in places. It does not need to cook through — it will finish in the gravy. The black edges are the flavour the gravy is built around, so do not be timid here.

3. 3Cook down the tomatoes

   Simmer the tomatoes with the cashews and a little water for twenty minutes until soft and broken down.

4. 4Blend until genuinely smooth

   Blend the tomato and cashew mixture, then pass it through a sieve. Butter chicken is defined by a gravy with no texture at all; the sieve is what separates it from an ordinary tomato curry.

5. 5Build the gravy

   Melt the butter, add the strained purée, the remaining garam masala, sugar and salt, and simmer for ten minutes until it thickens and the colour deepens to orange.

6. 6Finish with cream and fenugreek

   Return the charred chicken, pour in the cream and simmer gently for five minutes. Crush the kasuri methi between your palms over the pan just before serving — added earlier, its aroma cooks off.

Calories and nutrition

Per serving — 1 portion with rice (about 400 g)

Approximate values for a typical restaurant portion, calculated from standard ingredient tables. Actual figures vary with the kitchen, the oil used and the portion served. Not intended as medical or dietary advice.

Other dishes to read about

• Chicken Momo — Nepal's steamed dumpling, eaten by hand with a bowl of sesame-tomato achar.
• Veg Momo — The vegetarian momo, where the filling has to be seasoned harder to carry itself.
• Lamb Curry — Bone-in lamb cooked slowly until the sauce thickens around it.
• Chicken Biryani — Rice and marinated chicken layered raw, then sealed and steamed together.
• Mutton Biryani — The same method as chicken biryani, but the meat sets the timing.
• Veg Biryani — Vegetables cut to hold their shape, layered with rice the same way as meat.