Nav’s Story

I’m trying to learn how to cook meals beyond quesadillas, wraps, burgers, nachos, etc. I want to be able to make an awesome sweet butter chicken. I can make a spicy/mild one without too much difficulty using this recipe.

Today I made a pretty good sweet butter chicken. One of the spices I put in was a little too strong, but it was pretty good. Next time I’ll reduce the amount of the spices from ~ 1 teaspoon to 1/2 teaspoon, and use some tomatoes. 

2.0 Modifications, which I have tried and make the butter chicken even more awesome. I didn’t reduce the spices to 1/2 teaspoon, but instead used lightly less than 1 teaspoon for each of the spices.

• No ginger.
• No package of spices. I just use my own spices and the curry pastes.
• Add some sliced tomatoes. I add the tomatoes during the 5 minute cooking of chicken after adding the brown sugar. Maybe a couple of minutes after the brown sugar. I’m not really sure when the best time is, but it turned out fine this way.

Ingredients:

• 300g boneless chicken, cut up into small pieces.
• 1/2 teaspoon grated ginger.
• Small clove of garlic, crushed.
• 1 teaspoon coriander.
• 1 teaspoon cumin.
• 1 teaspoon turmeric.
• 1 teaspoon chili powder.
• Pinch of cinnamon.
• 1 tablespoon brown sugar.
• Some heavy cream (I used Thick Cooking Cream)
• 1/2 onion, chopped.
• Some cooking oil.
• Curry paste. I used almost one tablespoon of Vindaloo and another tablespoon of tomato & paprika. The ones I have are “Patak’s Original”. You can probably find these curry pastes at Metro Plus or Extra Foods.
• 1/4 package “Indian Butter Chicken Spice Paste”. Again, you can pick this up from Metro Plus or Extra Foods. 

Directions:

I used medium-high heat for frying the onions and cooking the chicken. I then put on a very low heat after adding the cream and curry paste.

• Put some oil in a pan, and fry up the chopped onion until it gets brown. I usually add the garlic with the onion.
• Once brown, add the chicken pieces.
• Add the spices and brown sugar.
• Mix around and cook for about 5 minutes.
• Add some heavy cream. I didn’t measure, I just added as much as I wanted to have a good amount of sauce. 
• Add the curry pastes and the spice paste.
• Mix well.
• Turn stove to a low heat, and cook for about 10 minutes.