Slow Cooker Indian Butter Chicken
by Chungah
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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
Video
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.
Equipment
Did you make this recipe?
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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
This was dead easy and really tasty. It was ready before the 4 hours, but that could be my slow cooker.
Recipe has been bookmarked to make again – will double it next time!
So easy and so delish thank you ! I made it in a large slow cooker and worked out great 🙂
Seems like a good recipe, looking forward to trying it. Just had a question, do we add the brown sugar, lime juice, and whipping cream after it has cooked for 4 hours?
Hello I am going to try and make this but may I ask what a sweet onion is? Is it a brown onion?
Yes, it is a brown or yellow onion. No big deal. Some places call them Spanish onions, but they are just those big onions usually heaped into a big bin at your local grocery store in the produce section.
Sweet onion is Vadelia onion or Walls Walla onions, the usual brown/white are fine to use also.
One of my all time favorite recipes. I swap the heavy cream for full fat coconut milk for a dairy free version.
Amazing! This was my second time making this. I added raisins and almonds to make it more of a korma. So good!
I loved this! I’m dairy free and wanted to add some veggies so I put in a bell pepper and an acorn squash, frozen chicken breasts (they shredded beautifully when done) and used coconut milk instead of cream. I freeze this in individual servings in zip lock bags and it makes for a delicious quick lunch or dinner. Thanks got another great recipe!
Made this with a couple changes… added a 6 oz can of tomato paste to the chicken stock and spice mixture, and I didn’t have any turmeric so we skipped that. Also substituted the heavy cream with coconut cream to make it dairy-free. So delicious!!
Not sure what you meant by change? The recipe calls for 6 oz added to stock/spice mixture??
In my crockpot now. Fingers crossed.
Tastes as good as it smells. Fun to prepare and little effort for scrummy results. Great recipe. Made it twice in first week.
Only question is, why cook the rice first? And how do u re-heat it? Cooked our rice fresh when the curry was almost done.
Hi!! I’m so excited to make this recipe with all these great reviews. However, I would like to add some vegetables such as green beans! At what time out of the 4 hours should I put them in the pot with everything else? Thanks!