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BUTTER CHICKEN
Unlike a lot of recipes for butter chicken I’ve seen online, I use the Indian restaurant method of actually grilling my chicken before adding it to a luscious tomato sauce fragrant with spices and finished with butter and cream. Indian restaurants simply use the previous day’s tandoori chicken in the sauce for the night day, there by avoiding waste and re-purposing it as a new dish. Not only does the spices and smokey flavor of the chicken add to the flavor of the sauce, but the sauce also re hydrates the grilled chicken and keeps it juicy and tender. If you taste a version of butter chicken where raw chicken is simply added to sauce, versus a grilled spiced chicken added to the sauce you’ll really appreciate that extra step of grilling the meat.
Ingredients
3-4 Chicken Breasts/ Thighs boneless, 1 Tbsp Ginger-Garlic paste, 2 tsp Chili Powder Kashmiri Chilli or a mix of Cayenne & Paprika, 2 Tbsp Greek Yogurt plain, 1 Lime juiced, Salt to taste
Spices
1/2 inch Cinnamon Stick, 2-3 Cloves, 2-3 Green Cardamom Pods, 1 Bay Leaf, 1/4 cup Butter, 1 medium Onion diced, 1 Tbsp Ginger-Garlic paste, 1-2 green chillies (thai), 1 (15oz) can Tomato Puree (not suace), 6-8 cashews soaked in hot water, 1 Tbsp Coriander Powder, 1/2 tsp Cumin powder, 2 tsp Red chili powder (mix of cayenne & Paprika works), 2 Tbsp Sugar, Chicken stock/water, 1/2 cup heavy cream, 1 handful fresh cilantro chopped,
ROGAN JOSH (MUTTON/LAMB IN A KASHMIRI CHILLI PEPPER GRAVY)
In India, we refer to goat meat as “Mutton” and sheep meat as “Lamb”. So when you see mutton on the menu across the country, it is referring to goat meat. From what I gather, this isn’t technically the same terminology used here, where both ‘lamb’ and ‘mutton’ are sheep meat and the only distinction is the age of the sheep when processed. The meat from sheep under one year is called ‘Lamb’ and the meat of sheep older (usually 2-3 years) is called ‘Mutton’. Anyway whatever the technical terms are… goat, lamb, and mutton are all delicious and underrated meats here in the U.S. For this recipe, we used fresh raised Goat meat, but you can easily substitute with lamb or beef (although beef won’t have the same flavor, it’s still delicious).
Ingredients
2 lbs mutton/meat (washed and cubed), 2tbsp Ghee + 2 tbsp oil, 4-5 Shallots (finely sliced), 2 tsp ginger garlic paste, 2 tbsp Kashmiri red chilli powder, 1- 1.5 tsp fennel powder, 1/2 tsp dry ginger powder, 1/2 cup yogurt (whisked well), 1.25 cups water, pinch of saffron (optional)
Spices
1 Cinnamon stick, 3 cloves, 3-4 green cardamom, 1 Tsp Cumin Seeds, 1-2 Black Cardamoms, 1 bay leaf
