Butter Chicken (Murgh Makhani)

Variations

• Paneer makhani: Use Indian paneer cheese instead of chicken for a vegetarian version.
• Milder: Cut the chili and add more cream for a gentle, kid-friendly curry.
• Tikka masala: Similar but more tomato-and-spice forward and less sweet.
• Dairy-free: Coconut cream for the heavy cream, oil for the butter.

Tips

• Cream in a tomato gravy is the textbook condition for dairy splitting. Dairy and heat names three things that split cream: boiling, acid (lemon, tomato or wine), and salt plus prolonged heat. Two of the three are in this dish from the start. That guide's instruction is explicit — in any acidic sauce the cream goes in off the heat, last — and it adds the number that decides the rest: 35% fat and above survives boiling, 30% and below splits easily. Read the label rather than buying whatever is called cream.
• Which is why cooking the tomato "until the oil separates" matters as an order, not a flourish. Chicken tikka masala runs the same step, and what the signal means is in blooming spices: when the oil comes back out onto the surface, enough water has left. Put the cream in after that and it meets a reduced sauce instead of a thin acidic one. The same ingredients in a different order are a different amount of risk.
• Kashmiri chilli is buying colour, and that colour lives in the fat. Yukgaejang states the property for the same kind of powder: a chilli's colour and aroma are fat-soluble, so they need oil to come out. A dish with this much butter in it, blended smooth, is a device for spreading that pigment evenly through the fat — which is also why the red comes from the variety and the butter rather than from using more spice (chilli and heat).
• Kasuri methi is the exception to "dried herbs are not substitutes". Fresh herbs files dried delicate herbs as different ingredients rather than substitutes, noting that dried coriander leaf and parsley have almost no aroma left. Fenugreek leaf is the one that is used dried nearly always, and crushing it between the palms is why: breaking the leaf is what opens it. Add it near the end, or the aroma you just released goes off with the steam.
• Searing and then finishing in the gravy splits one job into two. What the sear buys is colour and aroma, not doneness, and a chicken breast held at a simmer dries out. So the colour is taken quickly over high heat and the cooking is left to the cooler gravy. Scraping the marinade off before it meets the pan belongs to the same decision — while water is on the surface it cannot get past 100°C, and nothing browns at 100°C (what marinades do).
• Blend the gravy smooth for that restaurant-silky texture; puree the tomato and onion.
• Kashmiri chili powder adds color more than heat — the secret to the deep red hue.
• Crushing in kasuri methi (fenugreek leaves) brings the signature aroma.
• Sear the chicken first for flavor, then finish it in the gravy so it stays juicy.
• A touch of sweetness (sugar/honey) balances the tomato's acidity.