Indian Butter Chicken

Having came from and grown up for the first 20 years of my life in a small country town, I was totally oblivious to all the different foods that are out there, namely foods from different countries.  When I moved to Sydney in 2001 I was overwhelmed with the variety of food choices and fell in love with so many different ethnic foods.  One of my favorites is Indian butter chicken.

I’ve had a craving for butter chicken for the past week and since there are no Indian restaurants nearby in this suburb of Indianapolis that I’m now in, I had to make it myself.  I searched for a recipe and found on that had received heaps of great reviews and had a 5-star rating on FoodNetwork.com.

While it isn’t the best recreation of my favorite butter chicken from the restaurant in Sydney that I used to visit, this is a fantastic Indian dish.  Despite the long ingredient list, it actually is quite easy to prepare, as well.  I was very pleased with my version of butter chicken, and I will definitely be making this again.

My notes:

Now, I say “my version” because I realized that garam masala isn’t the easiest spice to find in the grocery store.  After a big search of the aisles, I ended up using curry powder instead of garam masala.  So technically, perhaps you could call this a red curry rather than butter chicken!?

I also used fresh garlic instead of preminced garlic from a jar; I minced two fresh garlic cloves.

I bought a fresh already-made rotisserie chicken from the deli in our grocery store, so I didn’t even have to worry about cooking my own chicken.  I tore the whole chicken into shreds and added it to the sauce.

The recipe says it serves 4, but the servings they are talking about must be huge – this recipe made heaps of butter chicken.  I think we’ll be eating it for the next three dinners!