Instant Pot Butter Chicken

Scott and I took William to an Indian restaurant recently that someone at Scott's work recommended and I tried butter chicken for the first time and really enjoyed the entire exotic experience. Then, about a week later, we saw Costco had a butter chicken dinner pack, complete with naan bread, so we took that home to compare and let Chris and Lucas try it. From there I started to look on the Internet and I found this Instant Pot recipe from Six Sister's Stuff. We tried it last night and every agreed that it was even better than the Costco pack! Enjoy!

See the original recipe here: https://www.sixsistersstuff.com/recipe/instant-pot-butter-chicken-recipe/

If you haven't had butter chicken before, one of the things that I think makes it taste so exotic to my pallet is that the Indian spice blend (garam masala) contains flavors that I usually associate with baked goods (cinnamon rolls, cookies, breads) and instead they are used in this savory creamy tomato sauce for the chicken.

Instant Pot Butter Chicken

Ingredients:

• 1 onion, diced
• 5 cloves garlic, minced
• 4 Tablespoons butter
• 2 pounds chicken thighs, or chicken breasts (raw, not cut or in large pieces for easy removal from the pot)
• 15 ounces tomato sauce
• 3 Tablespoons tomato paste
• 2 Tablespoons red curry paste
• 2 teaspoons garam masala
• 1½ teaspoons ground ginger
• 1 teaspoon salt
• ½ teaspoon smoked paprika
• ½ cup heavy cream
• fresh cilantro, optional garnish

Directions:

1. Set your Instant Pot to SAUTE and add butter, onion and garlic. Sauté for approximately 5 minutes until the onions are tender. Press OFF to cancel the sauté.
2. Add the chicken, tomato sauce, tomato paste, red curry paste, garam masala, ground ginger, salt, and smoked paprika to the Instant Pot. Lock the lid in place and turn the pressure valve to seal it. Set to HIGH PRESSURE for 7-9 minutes, depending on how larger your chicken pieces are.
3. When the timer goes off do a natural release for 5 minutes and then turn the valve on top to VENTING to let the remaining steam out of the pressure cooker.
4. Remove the lid and using a slotted spoon remove the chicken from the sauce and set aside.
5. Add the heavy cream to the pot and, using an immersion blender puree the sauce until smooth. (See Marsha's note about using a blender instead.)
6. Set the Instant Pot to SAUTE and stir the sauce while simmering for 7-10 minutes, or until it thickens. Turn OFF saute. (I found this step to be unnecessary, but if my sauce did appear to be too thin after blending, I could pour it back into my Instant Pot liner and continue to sauté.)
7. Add the chicken back to the sauce, stir together, and serve with a garnish of cilantro.
8. Serve with naan bread and white rice (here is my favorite Instant Pot rice recipe, which makes may about twice as much as you will need for the butter chicken but you can freeze the rest for later if desired:https://1brother2sisters.blogspot.com/2020/02/white-rice-in-instant-pot.html)

Marsha's Notes:

• For me, next time I am going to cook my chicken in larger pieces (instead of raw bite-sized pieces), then chop the cooked chicken on a cutting board into bite-sized chunks and then transfer them to my large serving bowl. Then, I am going to pour all of my sauce ingredients into a blender to make my sauce, then pour it over the chicken in the serving bowl. Because...
• The original recipe says to have the chicken in bite-sized pieces, but then later you have to fish them out of the pot to blend up the sauce. When I looked on their website, there is a picture of how they just put whole chicken thighs into their pot to cook. So I am not sure what is going on there, but I recommend either putting your boneless chicken in as is (for smaller thighs) or at least cutting into fairly large pieces/chunks that are easy to find and scoop out of the pot (i.e. cutting a breast into 2-4 pieces). Once the chicken is cooked and removed from the pot, then you can cut it into bite-sized pieces to add back to the sauce after it has been blended. Depending on how large your chicken pieces are, you may have to adjust the cook time for a minute or two longer.
• I also found that there wasn't enough sauce ingredients in the bottom of the Instant Pot to blend with my emersion blended without it splashing all over the place because the head of the blender couldn't get completely submerged, so it might be worth it to pour your sauce into a different, smaller diameter bowl for blending, or even pouring it into a blender.

This recipe calls for red curry paste, which I found easily in the Asian/Indian section of my local grocery store. However, I could not find the garam masala spice blend, so I had to order mine from Amazon. There are recipes online for making your own homemade version, but I wasn't really sure what it was supposed to taste like, so I got a professional blend. Now that I know better what things should taste like, I might try making my own when this bottle runs out. Here is the link: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00309S13Q?ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_fed_asin_title

Homemade Garam Masala Spice Blend (from Allrecipes.com)

Ingredients:

• 1 tablespoon ground cumin
• 1 ½ teaspoons ground coriander
• 1 ½ teaspoons ground cardamom
• 1 ½ teaspoons ground black pepper
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon 
• ½ teaspoon ground cloves
• ½ teaspoon ground nutmeg

Directions:

1. Mix all together. 
2. Store in airtight container.