Butter chicken
Here is our working butter chicken for Scoops & Dishes: no doorway fluff, just a cookable page with Australian metric detail and notes that prevent the usual failures. Serves 3–4 with about 10 min prep and 25 min cook time (around 35 min (plus at least 3 hr marinade) total). That is a home estimate — ovens and pans vary, so use colour and texture as well as the clock. The character of the dish comes from full-fat plain yoghurt, lemon juice and turmeric. Check quantities in grams where listed — volume is fine for many liquids, but baking and batter ratios behave better on scales. One practical flag before you start: Marinade is what makes the chicken tender. The Notes section expands shopping, heat, texture, and leftovers so the page stays useful beyond a bare ingredient dump. Everything on this page is metric-first for Australia. If you are converting from cups on an old card, weigh flour, sugar, and butter whenever the ingredient line shows grams.
Ingredients
Method
- Mix yoghurt, lemon, spices, ginger and garlic. Coat the chicken. Refrigerate at least 3 hours or overnight.
- Heat ghee in a large frypan over high heat. Add chicken with the marinade clinging to it (do not dump leftover bowl liquid yet). Cook about 3 minutes until the outside is white.
- Add passata, cream, sugar, salt and any leftover marinade. Turn heat to low and simmer 20 minutes until the sauce is a rich orange and slightly thickened.
- Taste for salt. Serve with basmati rice.
Tip: Marinade is what makes the chicken tender. The sauce is rich from cream, not a huge amount of butter. Garam masala is a supermarket spice mix.
Notes
- Shopping and mise en place: read the full ingredient list once before you start. For Butter chicken, full-fat plain yoghurt and lemon juice are the items that decide whether the dish tastes flat or properly seasoned. Weigh where grams are given — volume cups are fine for liquids and some dry goods, but baking ratios are tighter if you use scales. Australian cups are 250 ml; a tablespoon is 20 ml and a teaspoon is 5 ml.
- From our tested tip, expanded: Marinade is what makes the chicken tender. The sauce is rich from cream, not a huge amount of butter. Garam masala is a supermarket spice mix. Treat that as the non-negotiable. If something still feels off — too wet, too pale, too tight — adjust one variable at a time (heat, liquid, or bake time) rather than changing three things at once.
- Stove discipline: medium heat is the default for most home pans; cranking it high only helps when you are browning hard in batches. For Butter chicken, follow the cues in the method — especially “until golden”, “simmer”, or “bubbling” — rather than watching the clock alone. A heavy pan holds heat better and sticks less once food is moving.
- Putting it together for Butter chicken: work clean, taste as you go, and do not rush browning or reduction steps if they appear in the method. If you are cooking for mixed diets, plate sauces and toppings separately where practical. Keep this page bookmarked if it becomes a household regular — we update wording when cooks report a confusing step. Metric consistency across Scoops & Dishes means once you trust the cups and scales here, breakfast through dessert behaves the same way.