Slow Cooking Sunday - Indian Butter Chicken

This weekend, the need for slow cooker comfort food has once again hit W&W HQ, for I'm not only battling a razorblade throat suggestive of tonsilitis, but I have also managed to fall over on my tiled floor with a complete lack of grace and agility and my hip is now black and blue (and a distressing shade of purple) all over. It may or may not have had something to do with wearing fluffy bedsocks around the house and shimmying around in the style of Tom Cruise in Risky Business, all in the vicinity of the spot where I do my ironing and spray Fabulon liberally. Let me just say that I have been feeling pretty sorry for myself (and you can stop laughing now, thank you..).

You know there is trouble when you can't even summon the energy and interest to get Indian takeaway, and that's how I felt last night. Yes, this is supposed to be Slow Cooker Sunday, but I don't mind telling you that we dined in this manner in our trackies in front of the rugby on the tv last night (clearly a wild Saturday night for the W&W family!).

Last night this was the ultimate in comfort food - a warming, tasty curry at home in front of the telly, and it was just what I needed to counter my misery.

Now, about Butter Chicken - I suspect this must be as authentic Indian food as, say, Sweet and Sour Pork is authentic Chinese, but there is something about it that I love. Rich, creamy, full of exotic spices - warming and delicious. We eat Indian food rarely at the W&W household, maybe twice a year we will go out to an Indian restaurant, although I will whip up a veggie curry every so often in an attempt to clean out the fridge. When dining out, though, our order is usually the same - tasty, crispy onion bhajis to start, then some kind of hot vindaloo arrangement for my husband, and butter chicken for me (we share, obviously, but I don't handle the spice as well as the Mr does). I am pleased to say that the slow cooker version of butter chicken is rather a success and will probably be cooked in our household more frequently than we go out for a curry; and, fortunately, it is a bit more healthy than the curry-house version. Yes, it obviously contains butter (and please don't substitute margerine!), but in an attempt to inject a slight level of health I have used yoghurt to create the sauce rather than the more commonly used cream.

This is a winner in our book, and we hope you like it too.

Slow Cooker Butter Chicken
serves 4, or 2 hungry gluttons (with leftovers)

What you need:

• 1 kg boneless, skinless chicken thighs, trimmed and cut into 2 or 3 pieces depending on size
• vegetable or olive oil for browning
• 2 brown onions, finely chopped
• 3 cloves garlic, minced
• 4 tbs butter
• 1 tbs freshly grated ginger
• 4 tbs garam masala
• 2 tsp sweet paprika (not the spanish smoked variety)
• 4 tsp ground coriander
• ½-1 tsp chilli powder (to taste)
• 1 cinnamon stick
• 1 tsp ground cardamom
• ¼ cup tomato paste
• 2 x 400g tins chopped tomatoes (I prefer tinned whole cherry tomatoes but these can be difficult to find sometimes)
• 2 tbs caster sugar
• salt and freshly ground black pepper to season
• 1 cup yoghurt plus extra to serve
• picked coriander leaves to serve
• steamed basmati rice to serve

What to do:

Heat a splash of oil in a large frypan or saute pan over medium heat and brown the chicken in batches. Transfer the chicken to the slow cooker crock.

In the same pan, add another splash of oil and cook onion and garlic over medium until the onion begins to soften. Add the butter, the ginger and the spices and cook for about 3 or 4 minutes until the spices are fragrant. Stir in the tomato paste, tinned tomatoes, sugar and salt and pepper, simmer until thickened - about 8 mins. Stir in the cup of yoghurt and ensure it is well combined.

Transfer the sauce to the slow cooker base and ensure the chicken is evenly coated. Cook on the high setting for about 3 hours until chicken is tender and falling apart. Stir a few times during the cooking. Taste the sauce for seasoning, and adjust as necessary. If your sauce is quite thin, you can thicken it with a teaspoon of cornflour mixed with a small amount of cold water to make a paste. Stir through the curry about 10 minutes before serving.

Serve the butter chicken topped with fresh coriander and extra yoghurt if desired, along with some steamed basmati rice.

We like to have these with pappadums, but you can pick up a few store-bought naan if you like to mop up the delicious gravy (but we find the store-bought naans are just not the same as the ones in the restaurants!).

Best enjoyed in comfy clothes, curled up in front of the telly! :)

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Edited to add-

Instructions for cooking in a conventional oven: You can still make delicious butter chicken without a crock pot! Donna has commented on this post to say that she would have to adapt the recipe as she does not have a slow cooker. I haven't tried this any other way than in my slow cooker, but I would suggest following the recipe above in terms of browning the chicken and making the sauce in a frypan/sautepan, and then transferring the lot to an ovenproof casserole. Bake the casserole, covered, for about 1½ hours in a preheated 165°C oven until the chicken is tender and easily pulls apart with a fork.