Butter Chicken

One of Dan's Indian food favorites is Butter Chicken, but I've only tasted it a couple times. We looked through the Indian cookbooks we have (Modern Spice, Indian Vegetarian Cooking, and The Hare Krishna Book of Vegetarian Cooking), but none had a recipe for this classic. (Not that I expected to find it in the vegetarian cookbooks, mind you.) So Dan found a recipe online for me to try out.

The recipe was fairly straightforward, though how long some of the steps would take was unspecified, as was the level of heat to use. I should've got to work cutting the onion and cooking it down about 1/2 hour into the second hour of marinating, so that I could take the chicken out and cook it up right away. I tend to default to medium heat when a recipe doesn't say otherwise, but I would've shaved some time off cooking down the onions had I realized sooner to turn the heat up a couple notches.

Regardless of it taking longer than necessary, the time was worth it and the dish was incredibly flavorful and complex. Dan noted the distinct sourness coming from the lime juice and yogurt, with complemented a sweetness and spiciness from the other components. The chicken ended up moist and perfectly cooked, thanks to cooking in the sauce.

I've made some additional notes in the recipe regarding heat and times, for reference - though these may vary a bit depending on the size of skillet you use, your oven, and surely other variables.

Butter Chicken
1 lb boneless chicken breast
Juice of 1 lime
1 tspn salt
1 tspn chili powder
10 peppercorns
6 cloves
1 stick of cinnamon
4 cardamom pods
2 bay leaves
10 almonds
1 cup fresh yogurt
2 tspn garam masala
2 tspn coriander powder
1 tspn cumin powder
1/4 tspn turmeric powder
2 onions chopped
2 tspn garlic paste
1 tspn ginger paste
2 cups chicken stock
3 Tbspn vegetable oil
3 Tbspn butter

Mix the chicken, lime juice, salt and chili powder in a bowl and allow to marinate for 1 hour. In a skillet over medium heat, roast the cloves, peppercorns, cinnamon, cardamom, bay leaves and almonds till they darken slightly, then grind into a coarse powder. Mix the yogurt, whole spice powder and all the other spices together and add them to the chicken. Allow to marinate for another hour. Heat the oil in a pan over medium-high heat and add the onions. Fry till golden brown (about 20 minutes), stirring frequently, then add the ginger and garlic pastes and fry one more minute. Remove chicken from marinade (but keep marinade) and cook in the skillet with the onion mixture just until outside of chicken turns opaque, turning once (about 5 minutes). Add the chicken stock and the marinade to the pan. Cook until the chicken is done and the sauce is reduced to half its original volume (about 15 minutes). Melt the butter and pour it over the chicken before serving.

(Recipe courtesy About.com)