Grandpa Gotta Cook—Butter Chicken

If At First You Don't Succeed...

I imagine many of you are familiar with the saying, If at first you don't succeed...

No, it doesn't end with, ...go cry to your mother. It states, ...try, try again. Meaning, that just because the first attempt ended in failure, does not mean you are destined to fail every time. However, without doing more, you're not likely to know. You need to keep with it until success is achieved.

With that in mind, I take you back six weeks when I made an Indian dish called Tikka Masala.

You will remember, it didn't turn out according to plan. Way too much cayenne pepper.

At the time, it didn't dawn on me that the part requiring cayenne pepper was homemade curry. Duh! I could have just bought that part if I'd known, and let the experts ensure the cayenne pepper was proportional to the overall taste.

Well, I didn't try Tikka Masala again, but I did cook up some Butter Chicken, which is similar to Tikka Masala, but not as much tomato product, and actual curry seasoning rather than making it myself.

The results? We'll get to those in a minute.

This particular recipe for Butter Chicken was geared to the crockpot. Yep, I dusted off the old slow cooker again. It also called for chicken stock, tomato paste, yellow curry powder, garam masala, ground turmeric, salt, black pepper, chunks of chicken, onions, garlic, ginger, heavy cream, lime juice and brown sugar.

You'll notice that butter isn't a part of a recipe for Butter Chicken. Go figure. Perhaps the heavy cream is the butter? There were other recipes that called for butter along with heavy cream, so just to make it live up to its name, I put in a couple of tablespoons of butter.

In following the directions, I got a little ahead of myself. Everything but the heavy cream, lime juice and brown sugar are supposed to be mixed into a bowl and then poured over the chicken chunks. I ended up throwing the heavy cream in, too, and then wondering what that might do to it for the next three and a half hours.

The recipe called for four hours on low. It also said twenty minutes of prep. It took me at least forty minutes, plus I started late, so I let the crockpot cook on low for about two hours, then I cranked it up to high for another hour-ish. The chicken needed the extra cooking oomph, since at two hours the chunks were still only partially cooked.

With about twenty or so minutes to go, I started the rice, and then with about five minutes remaining, I put the Naan bread in to warm up. I put in the rest of the ingredients and waited. The rice took a little longer, but about five minutes later, everything was ready to go.

And The Winner Is...

Me! Yes, I'm claiming victory on this one, people. I toned down the curry just a tad, and played up a little bit of the other ingredients that I knew people would like, and voila, it was a hit! My wife immediately said it was very good the moment she tasted it. The youngest son went back for more, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I did not hear what the daughter-in-law thought as she was feeding the baby while the rest of us ate. I'll just say she liked it, too.

Objectives in using this recipe were met. Not so much tomato tasting ingredients (6 ounces of paste as opposed to 29 ounces of tomato sauce last time), not so spicy hot that it detracted from the rest of the flavors, and something with butter in it. I don't know if the butter actually came through or not. More butter maybe?

Oh, and having the cream in there cooking for three hours instead of poured in at the end didn't seem to detract from anything. Next time I do it, I will make it the right way to make sure.

You Know It's Good...

I couldn't wait to have more the next day for lunch. Having more Naan bread had little to do with it. I did forego the rice, though. One set of carbs the second time around was more than enough.

I'm glad I decided to try this other dish and find some Indian food my family really likes. Gives us another ethnic food to try on occasion. We could stand a little variety here and there, right?

So, until next time...

...Enjoy!

_{Images courtesy of Glen Anthony Albrethsen}

This post was published in conjunction with the weekly contest known far and wide as Food Fight Friday. Anyone is welcome to participate. To do so, simply write a post about food, post it on Friday, your time, use the #fff tag so others can find it, and then go and look at other posts. You'll have a chance to pick your favorite from among the entries. That's it. Winners receive shares of SBI.