Butter Chicken Tacos
 
 
Tacos with a twist! Indian Butter Chicken meets Mexican Tacos!
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Ingredients
For 1st marination
  • 1.5 lbs chicken breasts, cleaned and chopped in small pieces
  • ½ tsp red chili powder
  • 1 tbsp lemon juice
  • 1 tsp salt
For 2nd marination
  • ½ cup thick plain yogurt
  • ½ tsp dried fenugreek leaves or kasuri methi ( easily found in Indian stores)
  • 1 tsp turmeric powder
  • 1 tsp garam masala
  • 1-2 tbsp olive oil or any other good cooking oil
  • 1.5 tbsp ginger paste
  • ½ tbsp garlic paste
For sauce or gravy
  • 2.5 tbsp ginger paste
  • 8-10 cloves of garlic, made into a paste
  • 7-8 fresh green chilies, slit lengthwise
  • 1 tbsp ghee
  • 1 tbsp olive oil
  • 4-5 green cardamoms
  • 1-2 black cardamoms
  • 4 cloves
  • 2-3 inch long cinnamon stick
  • 4 cups tomato puree from fresh tomatoes or you can use canned too
  • ½-1 tbsp red chili powder or to taste
  • 10 almonds, soaked and made into a paste
  • 1 tsp garam masala
  • 1 tsp dried fenugreek leaves or kasuri methi
  • 1-1.5 tbsp sugar or to taste
  • ½-3/4 cup heavy cream
  • Salt to taste
Cucumber-red onion salsa
  • Chop 1 cucumber and ½ red onion in a bowl. To it add, salt, lemon juice, red chili powder and handful of cilantro. Taste and adjust.
For tacos
  • Butter Chicken
  • Flour tortillas
  • Cucumber-red onion salsa
  • Salsa verde (homemade or store bought)
  • Red hot sauce or salsa (optional)
Instructions
First marinade
  1. In a bowl, add chicken pieces, salt, lemon juice and red chili powder and let it sit for 20-30 minutes.
Second marinade
  1. In a bowl, mix all the ingredients for second marinate and to it add the chicken pieces from first marinade. Cover and let them sit in refrigerator for 2-8 hours.
Sauce
  1. In a deep heavy bottom pot, add ghee and olive oil. Once melted and hot, add cloves, both green and black cardamoms and cinnamon stick. Once they start to sizzle and become fragrant, add ginger paste, garlic paste and green chilies. Let it cook so it's no longer raw. To it add the tomato puree, salt, red chili powder. Cook it for 15-25 minutes until it starts to thicken. At this point you can blend the sauce in a high speed blender but BE CAREFUL as it's extremely hot so you want to be careful. Remove cinnamon stick and cardamoms. You can add them back to the sauce after blending.
  2. Transfer the smooth blended sauce to the same pot and turn on the gas. To it add 1-2 cups of water depending on how thick or thin you want the gravy to be. Add almond paste and cook it for 10-15 minutes. To it add sugar and fenugreek leaves. Cook for few more minutes. Keep it aside.
Cooking the chicken
  1. While your gravy is being cooked, you can cook your chicken in the oven. Pre heat the oven to broiler setting. Take a deep oven safe pan and layer with aluminium foil. Add the marinated chicken pieces but try not to over crowd. Cover with another aluminium foil making sure its properly covered. Cook for 15-17 minutes or until almost cooked. You might notice that chicken is still little pink inside but don't worry as we will be cooking it for sometime in gravy too.
  2. Add the almost cooked chicken to the gravy. Put it on low heat and add heavy cream, salt to taste if needed.Taste and adjust salt, heavy cream, red chili if needed.
  3. Assembling the tacos: Place a flour tortilla. To it add butter chicken, red salsa if using, salsa verde and cucumber-red onion salsa. Devour immediately.
Notes
You can prepare the gravy a day or two ahead and keep refrigerated.
If you don't want to cook chicken in oven, you can grill it or cook it on stove top.
Butter Chicken recipe roughly adapted from "ecurry.com"
Recipe by Naive Cook Cooks at https://www.naivecookcooks.com/butter-chicken-tacos/