Recipe: Butter Chicken

I am the absolute worst at controlling my spending when it comes to ordering Indian food. I love everything about it. Given that I am trying to not throw away all of my money, particularly over this summer, I jumped at the chance to try to make it on my own when I came across what seemed like a really manageable recipe!

Here is the recipe I used (mostly correctly, which is also a surprise when I make anything for the first time): The BEST Butter Chicken

So, the first step involves marinating chicken, and I marinated mine for 24 hours.

 I messed up and added ghee to the marinade because I misunderstood the written recipe, but it didn't hurt anything.

The next day, I just charred the edges of the chicken in a pan with ghee, removed it, and cooked down the tomato as directed.

I tend to have the hardest time being patient and I jump the gun in recipes and they don't turn out quite right but this time, I succeeded at resisting that urge! The tomatoes cooked for probably 25 minutes.

Such buttery goodness. Then, adding heavy cream told me what I always suspected but never REALLY understood: butter chicken is terrible for you. Next time, I would not add the full two cups though, I would try it with a cup and a half to make it a bit more tomato-y.

Once stirred together, the sauce becomes so silky and smooth! I added the chicken and let it simmer as the recipe instructs. It looked SO good and smelled absolutely amazing.

I couldn't find fenugreek leaves at any store around here, and ended up having to make a few changes. I used about a tsp of the ground seed, even though I know the taste is not quite the same, and instead of sugar I used plain maple syrup as the sweetener. At the end, the flavor was a hair flat, so I added another tablespoon of maple syrup and it turned out delicious. That being said, I plan to order fenugreek leaves so I can do this recipe properly soon!

It tasted so completely amazing. Not exactly like my local restaurant (unsurprisingly), but it was definitely as delicious. The flavor was just a bit different. I highly recommend trying this recipe if you love Indian food. I am trying chicken tikka masala next!!