Butter Chicken is an easy recipe that’s full of savory flavor with warm spices. This mild curry has tender chunks of chicken simmered in a creamy spiced curry sauce. It’s quick to make with chicken, tomato sauce, cream, and handful of pantry spices.
Serve over rice with a side of naan bread for sopping up the delicious sauce!
Butter Chicken
In Indian cuisine makhani is a butter chicken sauce. It’s basically a gravy the chicken is cooked in with plenty of warm spices, a hint of tomato and some cream.
Like curry-style chicken or curried chickpeas, it’s both rich and light and best served with rice and topped with cilantro.
Marinating the chicken in yogurt makes it incredibly tender, this can be done the night before if time allows.
How To Make Butter Chicken
It’s super easy to make this rich and tasty dish!
- Marinate chicken at least 30 minutes, but preferably overnight.
- Saute onions in butter and spices until soft and fragrant (per recipe below).
- Add all other ingredients to the onions and cook until sauce thickens.
- Add cream and continue cooking.
Serve over rice topped with cilantro. Yummy!
What to Serve with It
Butter chicken goes with everything because it has such a savory and mild flavor! Here are some favorite sides, salads, and bread to inspire you!
- This garlic butter kale rice is a perfect side dish for butter chicken!
- How about a Caprese salad to perfectly complement butter chicken?
- Try this delicious homemade garlic bread or cheesy garlic breadsticks.
Can You Freeze Butter Chicken?
Butter chicken can be frozen. Make sure it is chilled before freezing. Just place it in a zippered bag or and airtight container and label with the date on it. Butter chicken should keep about two months.
Favorite Chicken Recipes
- Chicken Curry – rich & aromatic
- Chicken Cacciatore – serve over pasta!
- Oven Baked Chicken Breasts
- Easy Chicken Marsala – 30 min meal!
- Creamy Chicken and Mushrooms
- Slow Cooker Butter Chicken
Ingredients
- 2 pounds boneless skinless chicken thighs
- 3 tablespoons butter
- 1 onion diced
- 1 tablespoon grated fresh ginger
- 5 cloves garlic minced
- 1 teaspoon cumin
- 1 teaspoon garam masala
- 1 teaspoon ground coriander
- ½ teaspoon chili powder
- ½ teaspoon turmeric
- 1 cinnamon stick
- ¾ teaspoon kosher salt or to taste
- ¼ cup chicken broth
- 14 ounces crushed tomatoes 1 can
- 1 teaspoon granulated sugar
- 1 cup heavy whipping cream
Marinade
- 2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
- 2 teaspoons garam masala
- 1 tablespoon cumin
- 1 cup plain yogurt
Instructions
- Marinate chicken in the marinade, 30 min or overnight.
- Remove chicken from marinade allowing excess to drip off. Brown chicken in 1 tablespoon olive oil or vegetable oil until browned on both sides, about 6 minutes. Remove from pan and set aside.
- Melt butter over medium heat, cook onions until tender. Add the ginger, garlic, and spices and cook 1 minute or until fragrant.
- Add chicken broth, browned chicken, crushed tomatoes and sugar. Simmer 10 minutes or until slightly thickened. Add cream and cook an additional 5-10 minutes. Discard cinnamon stick.
- Top with cilantro and serve over rice.
Nutrition Information
Nutrition information provided is an estimate and will vary based on cooking methods and brands of ingredients used.
Course Chicken, Main Course
Cuisine Indian© SpendWithPennies.com. Content and photographs are copyright protected. Sharing of this recipe is both encouraged and appreciated. Copying and/or pasting full recipes to any social media is strictly prohibited. Please view my photo use policy here.
Easy to prepare and super tasty! Already shared the recipe with friends and family.
I used my own greek yogurt Marinade for the chicken, but I the sauce portion of the recipe and it was absolutely fantastic. The cinnamon stick was a fabulous touch. I substituted coconut cream for heavy cream and used just a pinch of chili powder as the family can’t do spice very well. Excellent recipe that I will be making from here on out. Thank you!
You’re welcome Maria, thank you for sharing your substitutions!
I couldn’t believe how delicious this was. I’ve shared it with friends and the comment I received back was that her husband thought it tasted like it came out of a restaurant. I didn’t have a cinnamon stick but the recipe was totally forgiving as it is so flavorful anyway. Thank for sharing this great recipe with us.
You’re so welcome Marie! So happy to hear that!
I made this for dinner tonigh it is delicious, I will be making it again
I made this for my mom, sister, niece and brother-in-law. It was absolutely delicious!! So much so that I had to give the recipe to my sister. My mom had never had Indian food before and refused to give the leftovers to my brother-in-law. Needless to say, it was a hit!!
Just made your Classic Butter Chicken, easy to make and turned out amazing
can you do this recipe with white meat(chicken breast)?
Yes you can. Chicken breasts can dry out easier so you’ll want to be sure they don’t overcook.
OMG, this was AMAZING! didn’t have garam masala, so I used some curry and allspice as a sub. I also subbed sour cream for the cream. I also added frozen peas to the sauce for the last 5 minutes. It could not have been any better!
Everything looks delicious I’ll have to try a few soon
Howcan i make thia withiut the heat for my kids??
This recipe doesn’t have a lot of heat, just flavor.
Made it tonight! It smells amazing! I like that it’s easier than the slow cooker version.
I have made this several times now and my family loves it!
Have made butter chicken just love it
Great recipe! I paired this with coconut basmati rice and a kale salad, the flavors were wonderful together! My only down fall was I couldn’t get my sauce to thicken much, any suggestions for this? I had to use white sugar instead of brown I thought that may have something to do with it.
If using a taller pan with less surface area (instead of a wider pan) can make it take longer to reduce. If you can’t get it to thicken, you could try adding a cornstarch slurry. Mix equal parts cornstarch & water. Whisk into the simmering sauce a little at a time until thickened. Hope that helps.
Delicious! My family loved this recipe.
Delicious!
The made a few tweaks on this. I didn’t see cilantro on the ingredient list. Luckily so have some in my garden and it is an amazingly bright finish to the dish!
I used ghee to brown the chicken and then tossed the rest of ingredients into that pan. The flavor of the marinade with all the other ingredients is so apparent and deep that I had trouble not just eating it with a spoon!
I couldn’t find full fat plain yogurt, so I used sour cream for the marinade and it was equally superb.
I also THOUGHT I had chicken broth, but to my dismay I only had beef stock. Worked wonderfully!
This. Is. AMAZING!!!! Such rich, complex flavor and the whole family LOVES it!!!! Absolutely wonderful recipe!
One side note: I confused the “spices” with the ginger and garlic. I added the garlic after the crushed tomatoes, no problem, but perhaps the clarification in the instructions would be helpful.
Thanks for sharing Jessica! Glad it worked out well for you :)
This has become one my wife’s most requested dishes i make!!
Question…what is the serving size that corresponds with the nutritional information noted?
Thanks!!
The nutrition information is for 1/8th the recipe, it will be approximately 1.25 cup but can vary a bit based on how much your sauce simmers down.
Absolutely delicious…but gave me mad IBS. I’ll definitely make it again though!
This was an amazing dish! Perfect blend of spices and the chicken was so tender! I marinated it for 5 hours and it was just right. I used half and half because I’m not a fan of heavy cream and I added some stir-fried vegetables (red pepper, orange pepper and zucchini). Came out creamy and delicious!