After a lot more iteration (a dozen times more) on my personal recipe, I finally was able to put out a butter chicken that’s as delicious and complex as Amber’s. I’ll pass on what I feel is important.
-
Use both (good) canned tomatoes + a bit of tomato paste for that rich, tart-sweet tomato flavor.
-
Use both ground fenugreek and dried fenugreek leaves. They have a multiplicative effect. Just the leaves aren’t enough.
-
Use cream liberally. I use 1 cup (as the only liquid in fact).
-
Make the ginger-garlic paste fresh, preferably in a mortar + pestle.
-
Blend the whole thing in a high power (vitamix) blender to unleash all the flavors.
The rest of the spices used aren’t as important. I use a healthy amount of store-bought garam masala, kashmiri chili powder, hing, cumin, cardamom, cloves, cinnamon all in whole spice form, but these never got me the “wow” like this time did. It’s really driven mostly by the fenugreek (both kinds), tomatoes and aromatics.
