What: A favorite dish of Delhi, butter chicken is one of several Punjab-associated foods with a likely Mughlai influence. The Mughals, Muslim emperors who ruled India for a few centuries beginning in the 16th, were fond of a royally rich cuisine: boldly flavored curries; lots of ground and whole spices, dried fruits and nuts; roasted meats. The fact that some of these qualities were shared and/or adapted by Punjabi cooks explains why this type of food is still found all over North India. But of those bold curries, butter chicken, or murgh makhani, is the richest of all. The Punjabi founder of Delhi’s Moti Mahal restaurant (see below) claims to have invented both this and tandoori chicken—basically, the former was created once a buttery sauce was devised for the latter—but butter chicken retains many of the Mughlai trademarks: roasted meat, lots of spices, a thick gravy of butter, cream, and tomato. Add some fluffy traditional naan—or better yet, butter naan—and it’s impossible to go wrong.Murgh Makhani / Butter Chicken
Ingredients
4 chicken breasts / 4 leg pieces cleaned and thawed if frozen
For the marination
3/4 cup yoghurt
1 inch ginger cube finely chopped
1 tsp salt
3/4 tsp paprika
3/4 tsp garam masala
1/2 tsp red food color (i used rouge red used in baking )
4 tablespoons vegetable oil
1/2 tsp lemon juice
For the gravy
5-6 peeled and chopped and pureed tomatoes
3 onions pureed
1 inch cube of ginger finely chopped
10 cloves of garlic finely chopped
75 gms butter
100-150 gms fresh cream
1 tsp garam masala
3/4 tsp paprika
2 tsp salt
1 tsp fenugreek seeds(methi)
juice from 1/2 lemon
1/2 tsp sugar
1/2 tsp food coloring(optional)
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
chopped coriander or spring onions for garnish
Method
1. Mix all the ingredients of marination in a small bowl, so as to take the chicken pieces, and then add the chicken pieces, rub the marination well into the chicken pieces by your hands, let it marinate for 3-4 hrs in the refrigerator. I never have the time to marinate, hence you can marinate the chicken when you start and you would be good.
2. Once marinated, drain off any excess liquid from the chicken and oven roast it at 220C and for 10-12 minutes, turning it around once in between.
3. In the meantime, heat 2 tablespoons of oil in a frying pan, and add the onion puree and let it fry till it changes it color to a very light brown.
4. Meanwhile crush the ginger garlic in a mortar pestle and make a mice paste, add this to the onion on the pan and let it cook, in a while the raw smell of ginger garlic will go off.
5. Now add the salt, and paprika and garam masala and fenugreek seeds and fry for 30 seconds.
6. Now add the tomato and let it fry and turn darker in color, this should happen in the next 4-5 minutes, keep stirring occasionally, and maintain a medium high flame.
7. At this stage i prefer to blend the masala by a hand blender in the same kadhai by turning off the heat, you may wish to skip this step altogether, but it just makes the gravy looks more smoother.
8. Now add the butter and the fresh cream, and mix till the color of the gravy looks consistent, the food color is for this stage, if the natural color is not satisfactory, add it here, the tomatoes i get are not as red, so i felt like adding the color.
9. Now add the oven roasted chicken pieces to this gravy and stir till its covered well with the gravy.
10. Cover the chicken with a lid and lower the heat and let it cook for 15 minutes, checking it in between every 5 minutes.
The recipe asked for adding lemon juice and sugar at this stage, but i thought the gravy was just perfect to be interfered by any other flavor.
Don't omit the oven roasting step, since that adds a different dimension to the dish......Serve it with some hot parathas or some peas pulav!
classically for the preparation of butter chicken we use chicken tikka specially cooked in clay oven or tandoor.....but now a days roasted oven baked hicken is not bad instead of that ...so try once..and i must say...u will going to love this....
Very good
ReplyDeleteVery good
ReplyDelete