Butter chicken is one of my favorite dishes and a wonderful introduction to Indian food. It’s full of flavorful spices but it’s not hot/peppery. Traditional butter chicken is made with leftover tandoori chicken. Of course leftover tandoori chicken is best as the spices have more time to absorb, although I’ve never managed to actually have leftover tandoori chicken. It’s just too delicious! Fortunately, I found this butter chicken recipe, and it solves that problem. So not only do I get to skip making tandoori chicken and the temptation that comes with it, I get to throw everything into my slow cooker and go about my day while my dinner makes itself. Love it!
Slow Cooker Indian Butter Chicken made with spices you already have in your cabinet with all the creamy deep flavors you’d expect from a restaurant.
The Ingredients
I did have to pick up several items for this recipe, but nothing was hard to find. No special trips to another grocery store or ordering an unusual ingredient online. The chicken was the most expensive item at just over $12 for 3 chicken breast halves, but I expected that. That would easily be enough for 3 meals by itself, but I’m planning to serve my butter chicken with basmati rice, so I’m sure that will stretch the number of meals I get out of this recipe. That’s never a bad thing!
The Process
Putting this recipe together was super easy since the bulk of the total time was inactive (cooking). I had the chicken marinating in only 4 minutes, and mixing the marinade in the ziplock bag meant I didn’t have an extra bowl and spoon to wash. The next day, I had everything chopped, minced, and cooking in my slow cooker in 6 minutes. And 5 hours and 23 minutes later I had my butter chicken. Here’s the whole breakdown of the times for this recipe:
- 4 minutes to prep the marinade (active)
- 24 hours to marinate (inactive)
- 6 minutes to prep for slow cooking (active)
- 5 hours 20 minutes to cook (inactive)
- 3 minutes to mix in the cornstarch (active)
- 29 hours 33 minutes total (13 minutes active, 29 hours 20 minutes inactive)
