Butter Chicken

Ingredients

Total Time: 2.5 Hours

Chicken Marinade Ingredients (for 2-3 lbs chicken thighs)
2 Tbsp Indian garlic paste
2 Tbsp Indian ginger paste
1 Tbsp lemon juice
1 Tbsp ground coriander
1 Tbsp red Indian chili powder (more if you like it spicier)
1 Tbsp Tandoori Masala or Tikka Masala
4 Tbsp plain yogurt
2 tsp salt
1 tsp tumeric
1 tsp cumin

Curry / Other Ingredients
8 medium sized, on-vine tomatoes. (Chopped. In half splitting the core, then three slices perpendicular to the original slice. Then once down the center perpendicular to the three.)
1 large red onion. (Chopped. Large like softball size. If they don’t have any that big, use two smaller sized)
1/4 – 1/3 cup cashew nuts
2 Tbsp oil
1 stick of butter
1 cup heavy cream (left over heavy cream can be used to make rice pudding
1.5 cups water
2 Tbsp Indian garlic paste
2 Tbsp granulated sugar
2.5 – 3 Tbsp garam masala (use different kinds for flavor depth)
1 Tbsp coriander powder
2 – 2.5 Tbsp Kasoori Methi (dried fenugreek leaves)
1 tsp fenugreek powder
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp hing (asafetida)
6 – 8 green cardamom pods
3 whole cloves
1 tsp curry powder
2 Tbsp malt vinegar
1 tsp cardamom powder
1 tsp salt
cooked Basmati rice
2 – 3lbs boneless, skinless chicken thighs

Required equipment outside of normal cookware and utensils
small steel mesh strainer
blender or food processor. (a high quality immersion blender could also work if it’s professional grade. If not, a decent kitchen blender is best)
silicone baking spatula (or any curved wooden spoon or other utensil that will fit inside the mesh strainer to scrape the sides)

Procedure

Start by cutting up and marinading the chicken. Cut the chicken thighs into bite sized pieces.
Place the chicken into a large mixing bowl, and combine with all of the marinade ingredients listed above. Stir so everything is evenly coated, and cover with plastic wrap until ready to cook. Marinading overnight is best, but anywhere up and to 40 minutes before cooking is OK as well.

Once the chicken is marinated, heat 2 Tbsp oil in a large stainless steel pan over med-high heat. Use a deep, heavy bottomed steel pan with 3″ or so sides, like this:

Once the oil is hot, add the chicken and cook until mostly done and starting to brown a bit. About 8 – 10 minutes. Transfer the chicken to a bowl and cover with plastic wrap.

Lower the heat to medium, and add the chopped red onion, cardamom pods, cloves, and 1/3 stick butter to the pan. If the chicken used up all the oil, add a drizzle of oil as well. Stir to make sure everything is mixed and evenly coated, mixing with the left over chicken marinate left in the pan.

Once the onions have started to sweat, add the chopped tomatoes, 2 Tbsp garlic paste, and 2 Tbsp sugar, and mix to evenly combine. Once mixed, evenly sprinkle the cinnamon, curry powder, garam masala, fenugreek powder, coriander powder, salt, and cardamom powder over the tomatoes, and mix again. Make sure to break up any clumps of spices that may have formed from not sprinkling evenly. Lastly, mix in the cashews

At this point everything should been cooking for the past 5 minutes or so, and the water from the tomatoes should be bubbling, everything should be up to temperature. Add in 1 cup of water, and mix. If the mixture still looks a little thick, add in the remaining 1/2 cup water. The mixture needs to cook for about 30 minutes, so most of the water will evaporate, but you don’t want the mix to burn either.

once the mixture starts to boil / bubble, turn the heat to med-low, mix in the 2 Tbsp malt vinegar, and set a timer for 30 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Once 30 minutes is up, the mixture should be pretty mushy and somewhat dark. Turn the heat off, and dump the entire pan into a large stainless steel mixing bowl. It’s important to dump the contents into a mixing bowl before blending because there will be too much to blend all at once. After each blend, the sauce needs to go back in the pan, so the pan needs to be completely empty.

Ladle the sauce from the mixing bowl into the blender. Be careful and remember, this was just boiling 2 minutes ago – it’s hot. Don’t fill your blender up more than half way, and when you blend, your blender lid needs ventilation for the steam to escape or you will end up with a boiling hot tomato thick explosion burning the shit out of your arms and covering your cabinets. If your blender lid has a flip up spout that is used to pour the contents, flip it up and hold a kitchen towel or a few folded paper towels over the hole to protect it from splashing out. Either way, you need to ensure there’s a way for air to escape the lid before turning it on. Once you’ve done so, turn on the blender. Start slow, and build to high.

Once blended, get your steel mesh strainer, and hold it over the pan. Slowly pour the blended sauce into the steel mesh strainer until it’s almost full. Once the strainer is full, take the silicone baking spatula (or wooden spoon or whatever you have) and gently start moving it around the inside of the strainer, causing the blended sauce to filter through. It wont take long to get through, and once you’ve got all the sauce strained through, you will end up with tomato skins, seeds, cardamom pod material, etc. that couldn’t make it through the steel mesh. Dump this out and rise the strainer off in the sink to get it back to new, then repeat the process until all the cooked sauce has been blended, and run through the strainer, leaving you with a bright and smooth, silky tomato sauce in the pan.

Turn the heat back to medium, and add the remaining 2/3 stick of butter to the sauce. Stir into the sauce until completely melted. Add 1 cup heavy cream to the sauce, and stir to combine evenly. Cook for another 3 – 5 minutes until heated through. Add 1 Tbsp dried fenugreek leaves, and stir to evenly mix.

Once the sauce is heated through and mixed thoroughly, add the chicken and all juices that have collected in the bottom of the mixing bowl back to the sauce, and cook for about 10 minutes. Until everything is heated through and the chicken has fully cooked. After about 10 minutes, add the remaining 1 Tbsp dried fenugreek leaves, and mix thoroughly.

Serve with cooked Basmati rice, or naan on the side.