Murgh Makhani : The Best ever butter chicken i have made

"Know your enemy and know yourself and you can fight a hundred battles without disaster."



Yes i repeat what i said 2 days back, this time i knew my strengths, and voila, it was one of my best creations, and i loveddd it! It was a first for me in many ways, my first attempt at making a restaurant style red colored butter chicken with lots of butter floating over it :D, and also following the exact definition of the so to name authentic butter chicken, a chicken in tomato sauce, (and the silent players are the lots of butter and fresh cream, and also the chicken to be tandoori / oven roasted).

For me a makhani gravy was a cashew gravy with cream , oops, my basics were not right. A makhani gravy is essentially a tomato gravy slowly simmered with lots of cream and butter. And when i say lots, i mean it. After the disaster in the kitchen last night, hubs dear was just not ready to let me experiment, :D, in my rescue i uttered, i will not try from any blog !, i will follow one of the tried and tested cookbook recipes , haha, and luckily he was too lazy to cook, and i did get a chance to experiment, i picked up this book "World Cuisine : India (1) part of the world cookbook collection" with recipes from Sanjay Dwivedi(Zaika Restaurant, London) and J.P.Singh (Bukhara Restaurant, Delhi).



The murgh makhani recipe looked easy, i had all the ingredients handy, and it looked divine, for once i was convinced to use food color in my food. And what a success it was. The first quest for the so called best ever makhani gravy started when Sid of Chef at Large introduced me to one of his best creations, i was bowled over by that recipe and love it till date, but this one has my favorite onions! and this is definitely a killer. The description was not very accurate in the book, but was good enough for me to follow, will try to better it here.

Murgh Makhani / Butter Chicken 

Ingredients

4 chicken breasts / 4 leg pieces cleaned and thawed if frozen 

For the marination

3/4 cup yoghurt

1 inch ginger cube finely chopped

10 garlic cloves finely chopped

1 tsp salt

3/4 tsp paprika

3/4 tsp garam masala

1/2 tsp red food color (i used rouge red used in baking )

4 tablespoons vegetable oil

1/2 tsp lemon juice

For the gravy

5-6 peeled and chopped and pureed tomatoes

3 onions pureed

1 inch cube of ginger finely chopped

10 cloves of garlic finely chopped

75 gms butter

100-150 gms fresh cream 

1 tsp garam masala

3/4 tsp paprika

2 tsp salt

1 tsp fenugreek seeds(methi)

juice from 1/2 lemon

1/2 tsp sugar

1/2 tsp food coloring(optional)

2 tablespoons vegetable oil

chopped coriander or spring onions for garnish

Method

1. Mix all the ingredients of marination in a small bowl, so as to take the chicken pieces, and then add the chicken pieces, rub the marination well into the chicken pieces by your hands, let it marinate for 3-4 hrs in the refrigerator. I never have the time to marinate, hence you can marinate the chicken when you start and you would be good. 

2. Once marinated, drain off any excess liquid from the chicken and oven roast it at 220C and for 10-12 minutes, turning it around once in between. 

3. In the meantime, heat 2 tablespoons of oil in a frying pan, and add the onion puree and let it fry till it changes it color to a very light brown. 

4. Meanwhile crush the ginger garlic in a mortar pestle and make a mice paste, add this to the onion on the pan and let it cook, in a while the raw smell of ginger garlic will go off. 

5. Now add the salt, and paprika and garam masala and fenugreek seeds and fry for 30 seconds. 

6. Now add the tomato and let it fry and turn darker in color, this should happen in the next 4-5 minutes, keep stirring occasionally, and maintain a medium high flame. 

7. At this stage i prefer to blend the masala by a hand blender in the same kadhai by turning off the heat, you may wish to skip this step altogether, but it just makes the gravy looks more smoother. 

8. Now add the butter and the fresh cream, and mix till the color of the gravy looks consistent, the food color is for this stage, if the natural color is not satisfactory, add it here, the tomatoes i get are not as red, so i felt like adding the color. 

9. Now add the oven roasted chicken pieces to this gravy and stir till its covered well with the gravy. 

10. Cover the chicken with a lid and lower the heat and let it cook for 15 minutes, checking it in between every 5 minutes. 

The recipe asked for adding lemon juice and sugar at this stage, but i thought the gravy was just perfect to be interfered by any other flavor. 

Don't omit the oven roasting step, since that adds a different dimension to the dish. 

 

Savor it with some hot parathas or some peas pulav!

This is my day 28 into the December Blogging Marathon. Few more days, i already felt the void by missing yesterday, but i wanted to get my timing right.