Easy Indian-Style Butter Chicken Curry Recipe (2024)

Inside: Today I’m sharing one of my family’s favorite dinners, an easy Indian-style Butter Chicken Curry! This dish can be made as spicy or as mild as you like, and the creamy, spiced tomato sauce just soaks into hot basmati rice.

Many of us grew up watching our mothers cook. If we were lucky, we picked up some of their techniques and soaked in some of their tips. My mother learned to cook basic dishes from her mother. And I hope my daughter will pick up some kitchen skills from me.

My mother and grandmother never used recipes to cook.

There were no measuring cups, measuring spoons, or food scales to be found. Instead, they learned to cook by taste and by color. By trying different techniques and learning to trust their instincts. I thought that was how everyone cooked, until I found myself managing the kitchen of a restaurant.

In a restaurant, flour gets sifted before measured. You level off measuring spoons, and stick to specific brands of oil and vinegar. I understand this need for uniformity and ensuring that the dish you make today is exactly the same as the dish you make tomorrow.

But as home cooks, we can have a little more fun. We can play around and learn to trust our instincts.

I was motivated to write this recipe on the blog because I had two friends ask me back-to-back for a recipe for Indian-style Butter Chicken. And to be honest, I had no idea. I started with chicken of course. And then added in some spices and things and a few hours later, I had a pan full of butter chicken. It’s one of those recipes that seemed to be on auto-pilot.

I also didn’t have a clue about measurements. I keep my Indian spices in a little spice box. And my spice box comes with these teeny-tiny spoons.Not wanting to leave my friends without a recipe, I tried googling for “Indian-style Butter Chicken recipes” and you know what? I couldn’t find a single recipe that was close to what I did.

There are thousands of Indian-style Butter Chicken recipes.

Slow-cooker versions, and Instant Pot versions. “Healthy” versions, keto versions, and dairy free versions. Some recipes had 30+ ingredient lists. As I clicked through recipe after recipe, they all seemed wrong. Many of the recipes included strange ingredients like shallots, curry leaves, or curry powder. At least half of the recipes included onion.

Butter Chicken should never contain onion.

It’s just one of those rules that you learn when you grow up in an Indian household. Chicken tikka? Chicken curry? Definitely add onions. Butter chicken? NO ONIONS.

It’s kind of like making a bbq chicken pizza and adding marinara sauce. Like, what? No. Adding marinara sauce to a pizza with chicken is definitely still a pizza. It’s just not a bbq chicken pizza. Are we good? No onion.

So this time, I decided to make this familiar dish and actually pause to measure my spices and yogurt. I wrote down what I did so I could share this with all my friends. But please note, cooking is instinctive. Learn to trust your gut. If you look at my recipe and feel like I’m adding in more cayenne that you think I should, trust yourself. Add less. Taste. Correct. I’m giving you full permission to play with this recipe as much as you want.

If you prefer a creamier or more mild dish, feel free to add in more cream than I did. Love cilantro? Add in more than I call for in the recipe. Hate cilantro? Leave it out.

Let’s talk about something else that is super common technique in Indian cooking, but not usually used seen in American-style cooking: TheDouble Marinade.

Growing up, I always thought this was a thing that everyone did with their meat dishes. You know, add a little salt, red chili powder and lemon juice to your meat and let it sit for a bit, before adding on a yogurt marinade?

I do this anytime I cook Indian food. I marinate the meat, and then I marinate the meat.

I’m sure there’s a really good, scientific, reason for doing this, but I do it because it’s how my mom did it. So that’s how I’m going to teach you, too.

After I cube the chicken, I place it in a bowl and sprinkle on some turmeric, salt, and lemon juice. I massage it into the meat and set it aside for about 15-20 minutes. While it marinates, I clean up the cutting board, knife, counter and mix up the yogurt marinade.

It’s an extra step, but it doesn’t really feel like an extra step.

For the second marinade, I like to wait at least 4 hours, but usually overnight. I’ll often mix up the chicken late in the evening the night before I want it. Besides adding flavor, the spiced yogurt tenderizes the meat which is important because chicken breast can be fairly dry.

Easy Indian-Style Butter Chicken Curry Recipe Notes

Spices

Many recipes for butter chicken call for long lists of spices. The flavor of this dish comes mainly from garam masala, which is an Indian “all-purpose” spice blend. Every Indian family has their own recipe and grinds whole spices to make their mix. Luckily, you can find garam masala in just about any spice aisle, or at a local Asian or Indian grocery store. I prefer the ones at the Indian store as they more closely resemble what my mom and grandma make at home.

A brand I love is this one that’s available on Amazon. It has 15 different spices and includes the more “exotic” ones that my family typically adds like green and black cardamom, black cumin, dried musk melon, and fenugreek. Because so much flavor comes from this spice blend, it’s really hard to create this dish without it.

I use cayenne in this recipe, because it’s what I usually have on hand, and also because I’ve never seen a traditional Indian red chili powder outside of a Indian grocery store. (It IS available on Amazon) It can be easily confused with “chili” powder – which is a mix of spices like cumin, paprika, garlic and onion that is used to make Texas-style chili. Indian-style red chili powder is much hotter than cayenne and also comes in a much bolder red color. It’s made of finely ground Kashmiri chilis. If you happen to have it on hand, I’d add less than I call for in my recipe below.

Yogurt Substitution

I usually use yogurt, but I’ve tried this recipe with sour cream (when I didn’t have any yogurt on hand) and it came out delicious!

Garlic-ginger paste

I will often make a paste of garlic and ginger to use in Indian recipes. You can also buy a bottled ginger-garlic paste from the Indian grocery store. I think it makes recipes go a bit more quickly, but it’s absolutely not a necessity. If you don’t happen to have this on hand, just use equal parts of ginger and garlic. If you need 2 tablespoons of garlic-ginger paste, just use 1 tablespoon each of minced ginger and garlic.

Cream Substitution

I prefer the taste of this dish with half-and-half. My mom makes it with heavy cream, which is delicious, but also super rich. You can also stir in a bit of yogurt, or use coconut milk for a dairy-free version. If I use coconut milk, I omit the 1/4 tsp of sugar in the recipe as coconut milk has a natural sweetness already.

To serve

This Easy Indian-Style Butter Chicken Curry is fantastic with hot basmati rice. You can also serve it with fresh roti or naan to soak up the yummy sauce. If you have an Instant Pot, that is my favorite way to cook basmati rice. Take 1 cup of basmati rice and rinse it three times until all the water runs clear. Place in Instant Pot, and add in 1 cup of water, and cook on manual pressure for 6 minutes. Let it naturally release for 10 minutes before opening the pot. The rice cooks perfectly! I think it’s better this way than in a rice cooker. It’s always equal parts rice to water. 2 cups of basmati would need 2 cups of water, etc.

Related: Easy Vegetable Stir Fry Noodles

Easy Indian-style Butter Chicken Curry in Photos:

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