Monday, January 2, 2012

Chicken Makhani (Indian Butter Chicken)

This is a completely new type of food for our household, but my dad swears it is really good.  He said it is one of his favorite Indian dishes so I figured why not???  This is a crock pot meal so that makes it worth trying in my book.  I love my crock pot and anything I can use it for makes me happy.  I found this recipe on A Year of Slow Cooking.  I made a couple slight modifications using what I had on hand for the recipe. 

I must say my dad did not fail me.  This was AMAZING!  Everyone loved it and there were not any leftovers.  Even my picky three old who thinks he can only eat chicken nuggets and hot dogs enjoyed it.  That says a lot to me.  With the amount of sauce I could have really added four more chicken breasts and doubled the rice to have some leftovers.  Next time I make it I will have to do that so we have some for lunch the next day.  I love how this was so easy to make, but has so much depth of flavors.  I am just sad that it took me almost 30 years to make this let alone try it...YUM!




Chicken Makhani (Indian Butter Chicken)
4 Boneless Skinless Chicken Breasts
1 Onion, sliced
3 tsp Minced Garlic (or 6 cloves minced)
4 TBS Butter
1/2 tsp Ground Cardamom
2 tsp Curry Powder
1/2 tsp Cayenne Pepper
2 tsp Garam Masala
1/2 tsp Ground Ginger
1 Can of Coconut Milk
1 Can Tomato Paste (6 oz)
2 TBS Lemon Juice
1 Cup Plain Yogurt
  1. Put chicken in crock pot and then layer onions, garlic, and dry spices on top of chicken
  2. Add butter and tomato paste by dropping in various sections (I placed 1 TBS butter and 2 spoonfuls of tomato paste on each piece of chicken)
  3. Add lemon juice and coconut milk.  Cover and cook on low for 6-8 hours until chicken is cooked and tender.  About an hour or so into cooking give it a quick mix to blend all the ingredients
  4. Add 1 cup plain yogurt when done cooking.  Mix well and serve over basmati rice. 
Basmati Rice
1 Cup Basmati Rice
1-1/2 Cups Water
1/4 tsp Salt
Couple drops of oil
  1. Rinse the rice 3-5 times by filling a bowl with clean, cold water.  Swirl your finger around the bowl to help rinse the rice.
  2. Soak the rice for 15-20 minutes in clean, cold water.
  3. Bring 1-1/2 cups water to a boil
  4. Add salt, oil, and rice bring back to a boil.  Cover reduce heat to a simmer and cook for 7-8 minutes DO NOT remove the cover!  When done cooking fluff with a fork.  You can add any additional spices if you wish right before serving.
We served ours over basmati rice with a side of creamy cucumbers.  The cucumbers were made with 1 cucumber peeled and sliced, 1/2 cup yogurt, 1 thin sliced small onion,  1 tsp dill, 1 tsp sugar, and 2 TBS cider vinegar mixed together and set in the fridge to chill and blend flavors.  Super simple and a great compliment to the dish.  There is an Indian dish called Raita which looked similar so I made my good ole' American standby.  I can guarantee that I will be making some sort of Raita in the future. 


I love having successful dinners like tonight.  I hope there are many more to come as we broaden our horizons and begin to try different types of foods.  :)   
Thrifty Texas Penny

Come check out all the recipes or link up your own.  This is a great way to swap recipes and this months theme is slow cookers.  So every Thursday head over to find what great recipes you can find using your slow cooker!

8 comments:

  1. I think my husband would like this. What are cardamom and masala though? Are there substitutions for them?

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  2. Welcome to the Dishing It Up hop! We, at Chez Moppins, love Indian food so this is right up our alley. Thanks for sharing and come back and see us again.

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  3. Hi Cricketscts! They are both spices I did a quick google search and if you can't find the cardamom you could try ginger instead. Garam Masala is a combination of spices. I found it easily with all the other spices the brand I found was Spice Islands, but if you can't find it you can make your own. It will make extra so store the leftover (hint: you can season rice with it too!). Here is what I found just by doing a quick search:

    From Allrecipes.com

    1 tablespoon ground cumin
    1 1/2 teaspoons ground coriander
    1 1/2 teaspoons ground cardamom
    1 1/2 teaspoons ground pepper
    1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
    1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
    1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg

    Mix together and store in an air tight container.

    Pary Moppins this was my families first time ever trying Indian food. We were very pleased and I think we are going to be trying more in the future. I can definitely see myself making some Raita in the future :)

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  4. That sounds so good! The last time I tried an indian crock pot recipe (sort of similar to this one) the coconut milk seemed to kind of separate out at the end. But there wasn't yogurt added, so maybe adding something like that would help. Did you have issues with the fatty coconut milk separating during the cooking? Looks delicious!

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  5. I didn't have any problems with it seperating. The milk was sorta globby (great technical term I know...lol) out of the can, but once it started heating up everything melted and blended together. When it was fully cooked I added the yogurt and the texture became more creamy. It was really good. Everyone had seconds even my 3 year old who is the pickiest eater ever. I have to give him supplements because he is so bad, he's in and has always been 5th percentile or lower for weight :( Definitely a winner in our house!

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  6. Can't wait to try this!! Hooray!! Thank you for sharing!!

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  7. This looks and sounds really good. I've never tried Indian food, but my friends rave about it and my husband was invited over for dinner with an Indian family once and he came back simply drooling. Thanks for linking up!

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  8. This was my first experience with Indian food and it has made me want to try more. We loved it! I thought it would be a big fail and I couldn't have been more wrong.

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