They say, “The first time is the best time”, which may not always be true in all cases, but for butter chicken, Moti’s Butter Chicken was, is, and forever will be, my benchmark.
I have not been back to Japan since 1989, but I can tell you on any given day, if the Butter chicken I’m tasting lives up to my memory of Moti.
I have learned a lot since trying to replicate this epic dish, mostly that one of the dominant flavors is fenugreek, but that is not the total answer.
Looking at the menu for Moti, the butter chicken is described as “boneless BBQ chicken curry with tomato and butter sauce”. My guess is that you could also use Tandoori Chicken.
Many times I’ll see Chicken Tikka Masala on the menu described as “butter chicken” or sometimes they will actually say “Chicken Makhani”, but most times, it just tastes like chicken tikka.
The butter chicken should be creamy, buttery, tomato-ey, and velvety, with a tiny bit of curry and heat, and an underlying presence of, “I always thought peanut butter, but I was wrong, it’s fenugreek”. Here's what else I discovered, fenugreek seeds can impart a bitter taste. You need to stick with the leaves. If you can't get the leaves, then by all means use ground fenugreek seed, but it won't be as good.
The two aspects of the dish are almost equally important.
· the marinade for the chicken
· the sauce – or as many Indian chefs call it, the gravy
I have tried to make butter chicken many times using you tube videos that receive millions of views. Oddly, the marinade among these videos is radically different from cook to cook.
The sauce, also varies among the different cooks, but there is less variation for the sauce than for the marinade.
The first time I did this, I used the raw cashews as directed in the recipe, not only were they undetectable, they make the dish bad for people with nut allergies. My rendition has no nuts, and honestly, I don't think you need them.
Some recipes have onions, malt vinegar, garlic, ginger, but all of these ingredients overpower the dish. Butter chicken, albeit different, is much like coq au vin, pronounced and delicate at the same time.
Don’t get me wrong, most of the butter chicken recipes that I tried were good, but not Moti good. Also, disappointingly, I recently flew to Spain and one of the meals on the plane was butter chicken. The butter chicken on the plane was better than most of the recipes that I tried on YouTube. Go United, DBA Lufthansa!
Equipment:
Blender or stick blender
Fine mesh strainer
Nonstick pan, if you have one
Ingredients:
1 ½ lbs. chicken tenders cut into 1” cubes, tendons removed
Toss the chicken in the marinade and let it sit for at least 2 hours, but preferably over night.
Marinade:
1 tsp. Kashmiri Chili
1 tsp. Garam Masala
1 tsp. Turmeric
2 tbs. plain yogurt
½ tsp. of garlic ginger paste, if you have it.
2 oz water just enough to help blend the spice and yogurt
Sauce:
About 5 plum tomatoes – 400 grams or just less than 1 pound - diced
1 stick of butter (or more as needed, but probably not)
1 tsp. Kashmiri chili powder or - ½ TSP if you want less heat
1 tsp. Garam Masala
2 tbs. Fenugreek Leaves
2 tbs. sugar
1 tsp. kosher salt
½ cup of heavy cream
Method:
Heat the frying pan and add a about a tablespoon of butter.
When the butter is melted and bubbling, pan fry the chicken cubes in batches as to not over crowd the pan.
Season the chicken while frying with a sprinkle of salt and pepper.
Don’t cook the chicken all the way through, just get some color on each side. Remove the chicken from the pan and do the next batch.
When all of the chicken has been sautéed, add another table spoon of butter to the pan and add the diced tomatoes.
Add the spices, kashmiri chili powder, garam masala, fenugreek, salt, sugar to the tomatoes and simmer over low heat covered for about 15 / 20 minutes.
When the tomatoes have released their liquid, turn the flame off and transfer the contents of the frying pan to the blender or container where you can use your stick blender.
Puree the tomatoes to a fine liquid.
Strain the tomato puree back into the frying pan. Force it though a fine sieve.
Simmer the tomato puree with 2 tablespoons of butter until it thickens. Reduce it to almost half, you'll see as it thickens. The attached video is the latest with all of the corrections.
Add the cream and stir it up.
Add the chicken back to the frying pan and let it simmer in the sauce for about 10 minutes, or until the chicken is cooked through.
You could garnish with some fenugreek leaves and cream, I did not. I garnished with a little fresh cilantro, just for the color.
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This is the best recipe that I could find on YouTube and it is very good - https://youtu.be/vjKEUBg-ziY
I stumbled across this guy and really like his style
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