The most basic recipe I make here in India is this : (I’m unable to give exact measurements because I don’t use them myself)

For the chicken :

• Typically, leftover tandoori chicken is used, but you can also use some basic cooked chicken.

• I usually do a simple yoghurt and spice marinades. If you have a spice store around your place, look for tandoori masala. It can make your life easier.

For the sauce (for roughly 200gms of chicken):

• Start with some butter/oil/ghee in a pan.

• Add 1-2 medium-sized onions, roughly chopped.

• Add about a tablespoon of ginger and about the same of garlic. You can use ginger garlic paste if you want (blended in a 1:1 ratio).

• Cook it a little bit, but don’t turn the heat on because you don’t want to colour the onions. You can add some salt to speed up the process.

• Add some whole spices - 3-4 cloves, 1-2 cardamoms, small piece of cinnamon, 4-5 black pepper corns. I also add like a petal of star anise.

• Add about a fistful of cashews.

• Cook it out for 2-3 minutes on a low heat. You basically want the onions to soften and the raw ginger and garlic smell to go.

• Add tomatoes. For every 1 onion, I go for 2 tomatoes. I usually just eyeball it by volume.

• Add powdered spices - 1 teaspoon each of Coriander powder and cumin powder, 2 teaspoon of Kashmiri red chilli powder (it’s important that it’s Kashmiri because this is very mild and only adds colour. If you’re using any other chilli, use less or as per your choice.) , 0.5 teaspoon of turmeric.

• Stir and cook until the spices are done. You’ll know this in one of two ways - the raw smell of the spices are gone, or the oil separates from the mixture in the pan. This takes a bit of time and practice to get right. You can find images or videos if you google “oil separates spices”. If the pan is running dry, add a splash of water every now and then.

• When it’s done, let the mixture cool and then blend it until smooth. Run it through a sieve if you have the patience for even more smooth results.

• Now, in a pan, add the blended curry and add some water to thin it. Check for seasoning. Add the chicken, add some cream to thicken it and add some richness.

This is a very easy recipe that can be customized for anything. Add paneer instead of chicken and you have Paneer Butter Masala. Add peas and paneer, and you have matar paneer. Add assorted veges and cook it in this curry and you have mix veg.

My abomination of a lazy person’s butter chicken:

Ingredients:

• jar of butter chicken sauce from my local Kroger store
• Costco rotisserie chicken
• mixed frozen veggies
• canned water chestnuts and/or bamboo shoots (totally optional, but I like them)
• rice

Directions:

• Start rice in rice cooker
• Heat frozen veg in a skillet (I use cast iron)
• Once veg is heated through, add canned veg
• Add jar of sauce and rotisserie chicken and let simmer until rice is done
• Serve over cooked rice and enjoy

This is the recipe i follow, and it’s a real winner: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=a03U45jFxOI

My tips:

• marinate your chicken as long as you can
• don’t skimp on the cashews - they add so much to the texture and creaminess
• blitzing it feels like a pain but is 10000% worth it!
• if you can find Kashmiri chilli anywhere near you (Indian grocers will probably stock it) it’s worth picking up a bag - it’ll last ages and has the right sweet smoky flavour

I’ve never tried this recipe, but I’ve had good luck with other recipes on this site, and this one looks legit.

https://cafedelites.com/butter-chicken/

I had great results with this one: https://www.seriouseats.com/stovetop-butter-chicken

I use this with some slight modifications:

https://www.bonappetit.com/recipe/butter-chicken

Honestly we put way more effort into marinating our chicken than the actual sauce (caveat: we’re very white, and this is all picked up from reading). Meat’s expensive and Aldi’s chicken quality is… not great, but marinating it helps out a lot.

For 6 pounds of chopped chicken breast, we do the following:

• first marinade: 5 tbsp lemon juice, 1 tbsp salt, 1 tbsp chili powder, 1 tbsp paprika
• smoosh all around, let sit in the fridge for ~30 min
• second marinade: 1.5 cups plain Greek yogurt (this could probably be reduced to ~1 cup too), 6 tbsp ginger garlic paste (we load up on big jugs from our local Indian market, so much easier than making from scratch), 5 tbsp oil, 3/4 tsp turmeric, 2 tbsp garam masala, and 1 tbsp fenugreek (also from our Indian market, bought whole then ground in batches)
• smoosh all around, keep chicken in the marinade the rest of the week while using it up.

It’s a decent amount of effort, but only doing it once a week helps. And whenever we get lazy and have to eat our chicken without marinating it because we forgot… it’s SO much drier and less flavorful.

(For the sauce we just use Aldi’s jarred butter chicken / korma / tikka masala. Korma is the best, the others are mediocre. They super rarely have jarred madras curry in the limited time section and that is amazing, imo actually spicy. Tragic they don’t sell it as regular stock.)

Guys please help a confused European - is it the same as Chicken Tikka Masala? Or like Tikka Masala with butter?

This is the one I use, it’s simple: https://www.recipetineats.com/butter-chicken/

I’m not so keen on the recipes that use yoghurt, I feel that it gives me the wrong texture, so I’ve settled on this recipe that I think gives great flavor and great texture for very low effort.

https://gimmedelicious.com/easy-20-minute-butter-chicken/