Butter chicken is one of our go-to Indian restaurant dishes, (right up there with Tikka Masala!) and we love it so much we just had to try making a homemade version. Also known as ‘Murgh Makhani’, creamy butter chicken stands out from a lot of Indian recipes because it’s easy to make at home! While we love an excuse to try cooking with new spices, we also love being able to easily recreate our favorite restaurant recipes at home, and butter chicken has a really approachable ingredients list.
Make our Slow-Cooker Butter Chicken for days when you need to set it and forget it — the ingredients are the same — but our easy butter chicken recipe comes together fast on the stove top, too, and is such a weeknight win. Grab yourself about 30 minutes, and get ready to make the best stovetop butter chicken ever!
Is Butter Chicken Authentic?
Yes! Butter chicken is a classic Indian recipe, but it’s not very old. Cookbook author Madhur Jaffrey (who introduced a lot of people in the US and UK to the idea of cooking Indian food at home) butter chicken was created at the Moti Mahal restaurant in Delhi in the 1950s. But in just a few decades, it has fast become a globally beloved dish. After one bite of the generously spiced, savory creamy tomato sauce and the tender chicken, it’s easy to understand why butter chicken has had such a stratospheric rise from restaurant experiment to Indian take out staple. Lamb Curry is another easy Indian take out recipe that’s easy to make at home!
Easy Butter Chicken Ingredients
Chicken: Boneless, skinless chicken breast is perfect for butter chicken, because it takes on all of the rich flavors so well, and becomes beautifully tender simmered in the delicious butter chicken sauce.
Butter: We like to use salted butter for this recipe, just for a little extra savory kick.
Spices: Cinnamon, cumin, Garam Masala (an Indian spice blend that’s really easy to find), and turmeric.
Fresh garlic and ginger: These are key! Fresh, bold and fragrant, they’ll bring your butter chicken to life. Tip: Using a microplane grater is the easiest way to grate the ginger.
Heavy cream: You can also substitute full-fat coconut milk for the heavy cream, if you’d like to!
Olive oil.
Onions: We like to use yellow onions for this recipe, but sweet onions would be OK too.
Chicken stock: Veggie stock is fine, too, if that’s what you have on hand.
Tomato paste: Tomato paste adds tons of depth and richness to the butter chicken sauce.
Lemon juice: A little zing of lemon juice is key here! It brightens up the dish, which is pretty rich.
How To Make Butter Chicken
Prep the chicken breasts. Our favorite tip for cutting chicken breasts: It’s easier to cut chicken into cubes if it’s just a bit frozen. So, if you can remember to pop the chicken breasts into the freezer about an hour before you start cooking, yay! If not, no biggie.
If you’re making it in a slow cooker, take all of these same ingredients over to our Slow-Cooker Butter Chicken recipe. If you’re making butter chicken on the stovetop, grab your favorite lidded pan and keep going.
Sauté the onions, garlic and ginger for a few minutes.
Stir in the butter, stock, tomato paste, all of the spices—the flavorful base of the butter chicken sauce!—followed by all of the chicken pieces.
Pop a lid on the pan and simmer until the chicken is done.
Stir in the cream and lemon juice, and simmer on low for just a few minutes to let everything cohere.
You did it! You made butter chicken! We love this with plain, steamed basmati rice, and serve some warm naan on the side if you’ve got it!
What To Serve With Butter Chicken
Butter chicken is so rich and satisfying, it’s almost a meal in itself. Try serving it with some (or all) of these sides:
Fresh homemade Raita
Store bought naan or flatbread for scooping up all that lovely, velvety butter chicken sauce
Indian pickles (this is a stretch goal, but worth mentioning!)
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