Butter chicken has long been treated as the culinary comfort blanket of Indian cuisine. It’s the dish you order when you’re unsure what else to try, the creamy, tomato-laced fallback that rarely offends and always satisfies. In a way, it holds the same place on an Indian menu that pizza occupies in American life: even when it’s just okay, it still hits the spot.
For a long time, I thought of butter chicken in exactly those terms—pleasant, predictable, and a little too safe. I grew up in New Delhi, where butter chicken was everywhere, and I mean everywhere. It was the go-to order for expats and picky eaters, a gateway dish for people too hesitant to dive into the bold spices and assertive flavors of the subcontinent’s richer culinary canon. In my mind, it was the chicken fingers of Indian cuisine—reliable, familiar, and a bit dull.
But it turns out, I was wrong. Deeply, deliciously wrong.
A Second Look at a Beloved Classic
The turning point came when I stumbled upon an Instant Pot butter chicken recipe on Two Sleevers, the wildly popular blog run by Dr. Urvashi Pitre. The dish had caught the attention of The New Yorker, and something about its widespread acclaim made me curious. I decided to try it—half out of professional interest, half to see what all the fuss was about.
That night, I made the dish, pressure-cooked to creamy, savory perfection, and served it to my wife. She’s no stranger to Indian food—at least, the version of it that exists in our kitchen—but she was floored. “Why haven’t you made this before?” she asked, fork poised mid-air.
I muttered something about how “it’s not really Indian food,” already regretting the words. The question lingered: What makes a dish authentically Indian, anyway? And why had I so casually written off something loved by millions, including a large swath of Indians both in the country and across the diaspora?
Good Is Good—And That’s Enough
What I realized, finally, is this: butter chicken isn’t popular because it’s a diluted version of something else. It’s popular because it’s good. Very good, in fact. You don’t need to be a culinary anthropologist to understand why: tender chunks of chicken bathed in a lush, tangy tomato sauce, mellowed with cream and a generous amount of butter. It’s spiced, but not aggressively so. Rich, but not heavy. There’s a softness to it that’s universally appealing.
There’s a reason butter chicken (or murgh makhani, as it’s called in Hindi) continues to be a mainstay at Indian restaurants worldwide: it rarely disappoints. It’s forgiving to make, adaptable to personal preferences, and almost impossible to mess up—qualities that endear it to home cooks and seasoned chefs alike.
Memory, Flavor, and the Real Deal
Still, something about the pressure-cooked version didn’t quite match what I remembered from my childhood. Taste memories can be slippery—shaped by time, place, and emotion—but I felt sure the butter chicken of my youth had something this one didn’t.
Specifically, it was missing the earthy bitterness of dried fenugreek (known as kasuri methi) and the deep, almost smoky aroma of brown cardamom. Those two ingredients, in my mind, are part of butter chicken’s soul, the subtle but essential layers that give it dimension beyond cream and tomatoes.
So I set about tweaking the recipe. A pinch of fenugreek here, a cracked brown cardamom pod there. The changes were minor, but the result? Transformative. Suddenly, I wasn’t just eating a good version of a classic—I was transported. Back to crowded Delhi restaurants, to metal plates and butter-soaked naan, to the version of butter chicken that lived in my muscle memory. That’s when I knew: this dish had always been worth taking seriously.
Not Just a Crowd-Pleaser
Butter chicken is often boxed into a narrow category—comfort food, beginner-friendly, non-threatening. But that sells it short. At its best, it’s a showcase of balance: richness tempered by acidity, heat offset by sweetness, fragrance that lingers but doesn’t overwhelm. It’s a master class in what Indian cooking does best—layering flavor, respecting technique, and feeding the soul.
And, importantly, it’s not a relic. Butter chicken continues to evolve in home kitchens and restaurants alike. Pressure cookers, slow cookers, stovetop versions—there’s a version for every kind of cook. But as long as the heart of the dish remains intact, as long as someone is pouring a little extra cream at the end and swiping up sauce with torn bread, it’s still butter chicken.
Final Thoughts: From Cynic to Champion
My relationship with butter chicken has changed. I used to see it as a culinary compromise, a dish that played it too safe. Now, I see it for what it is: a dish that unites. It’s a staple on wedding menus and takeout counters alike. It’s the dish a first-time visitor to India might fall in love with—and one that even a homesick Delhiite abroad might crave after months away.
So go ahead, embrace butter chicken without irony or apology. Serve it to skeptics and food snobs and spice fiends alike. Add your fenugreek, adjust the cream, make it your own. Just don’t underestimate it.
Because butter chicken, like pizza or grilled cheese, proves one delicious truth: food doesn’t need to be complicated to be profound. Sometimes, it just needs to be good.
