Slow Cooker Indian Butter Chicken
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Simple prep with zero fuss! Restaurant-quality butter chicken made so easily in the crockpot. Serve with rice and naan.
I’m sure some of you have already put away your crockpot for the season. Up in one of those high cupboards so you don’t have to see your slow cooker until the Fall hits.
But seeing as to how we moved to Chiberia and it’s still the dead of winter here, my slow cooker has been on full blast, especially with this butter chicken.
I mean, I have seriously made this at least four times in the last 6 weeks.
Mainly because it’s so stinking easy.
Prep work is minimal and you can throw everything right into the crockpot. And while your chicken cooks low and slow to that tender, melt-in-your-mouth goodness, you can cook your basmati rice and warm your garlic naan.
And here’s a big secret I’ll let you in on: be sure to hoard all the sauce you possibly can for naan dipping purposes.
Slow Cooker Indian Butter Chicken
Ingredients
- 1 cup basmati rice
- ½ cup chicken stock
- 1 (6-ounce) can tomato paste
- 2 teaspoons yellow curry powder
- 1 teaspoon garam masala
- 1 teaspoon ground turmeric
- 1 teaspoon kosher salt
- ½ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
- 2 pounds boneless skinless chicken thighs, cut into 1-inch chunks
- ½ sweet onion, diced
- 3 cloves garlic, minced
- 1 tablespoon freshly grated ginger
- ½ cup heavy cream
- 2 tablespoons freshly squeezed lime juice
- 1 ½ teaspoons brown sugar
Instructions
- In a large saucepan of 2 cups water, cook rice according to package instructions; set aside.
- In a small bowl, whisk together chicken stock, tomato paste, curry powder, garam masala, turmeric, salt and pepper.
- Place chicken, onion, garlic and ginger into a 4-qt slow cooker. Stir in chicken stock mixture.
- Cover and cook on low heat for 4 hours. Stir in heavy cream, lime juice and brown sugar; season with salt and pepper, to taste.
- Serve immediately with rice.
Did you make this recipe?
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This was so good! I doubled the recipe for D&D night and everyone loved it. I do have one question though:
Why is it called “butter” chicken when there’s no actual butter in the recipe?
There is nothing more delicious than a well made butter chicken. Authentic recipe includes curd to marinate chicken.
Delicious! I brought it to a potluck and it was a huge hit. Will def make again
AMAZING!!! This is absolutely spot on delicious! I was originally going to double it but decided not to just in case it did not turn out well, now I regret it. Tastes exactly like what you get in the restaurant, SO GOOD! Thank you!!
Made this tonight and it was a hit with the family.So delicious!!! Will make again.
My first time making it, I accidentally quadrupled the broth, reading 2 c. instead of 1/2 c. Despite that and not having the garam masala that I thought I had on hand, it was good.
This time I used about 3/4 c. broth, and subbed whole milk for the cream. It is excellent. Thumbs up all around our table!
Love this recipe! I double all the spices and add cayenne because I like it spicy! I use swerve brown sugar and cauliflower rice which makes this a perfect keto meal! I also think this is much like soups it is better the next day and just keeps getting better everyday after, which makes it perfect for meal prep!
Thanks. This was excellent
My son Max makes this it’s Delish’
Great recipe and a family favorite! We added a little more brown sugar to balance the lime and some red curry paste for extra heat. Store bought naan baked and brushed with garlic and melted butter. YUM
Great recipe – I doubled the sauce and subbed out coconut cream for the regular cream. Had it for dinner but now dehydrating a couple of serves for hiking (after shredding the chicken). Thanks for another winner!
Made this recipe tonight here in Australia and it was wonderful! So much better than my previous attempt with a different recipe. I think with a few minor tweaks it’ll be perfect (for me)
Next time I’ll use thighs instead of breasts (as the recipe suggests!) and I’m wondering whether cooking for 6 hours might be better than 4 hours. When I first tasted it, it felt far too sour from the 2 tablespoons of line juice so I added more cream (a lot more) and kept adding sugar until it didn’t taste so tart. I probably added about 4 more teaspoons of sugar. Next time I’ll definitely add double the mixture of sauce as I prefer butter chicken sauce to the actual chicken itself, prefer everything saucier.
I think if I used breasts again & id see if it was better after more time and more shredded/falling apart. As the chicken it in was quite hard and laborious chewy on it. The only weird thing I thought was step one, cool rice and set aside. I mean who in their right mind would rice first and leave it sitting there for 4 hours!!? Totally bizarre. Wouldn’t everyone just cook rice 30 mins before meal is ready and serve it fresh and hot! 🙂
Great recipe. I added in chilli flakes, siracha sauce, cumin, garlic powder, ginger powder and onion powder. Dry fried all spices before putting in. Was more generous with spices. Doubled onion quantity from recipe. Also put half as much tomato paste. Plus some onion relish we had in fridge. At 3.5 hours, took from the slow cooker and put in the pan/wok for half hour to thicken. Delish.
Super easy and very tasty.
Amazing! Used quinoa instead of rice. Very easy to make and tastes SO good.
Bam .. soooo good and soooo easy
Trying this tonight and really looking forward to it just one thing was if it’s called butter chicken why is there no butter in the ingredients
This was so good and easy. Nice bit of bite after each mouthful. May experiment with mixing the cream in and giving it another 10 minutes to thicken, though with the rice everything was coated nicely.
This was really really delicious and the chicken was super soft. A real winner.
Fantastic. Too easy too tastey. Yummo