This easy butter chicken pasta has tender and flavorful chicken meat, cooked in a tangy, spiced yogurt marinade.
Serve with pasta of your choice. Try it for a quick meal for the family!
What Is Butter Chicken?
This is a dish featuring tender and flavorful chicken meat, cooked in a tangy, spiced yogurt marinade.
You might be surprised at how super easy this is to make, without sacrificing on the flavors! You can easily find the required ingredients from supermarkets. For this recipe, I omitted strong spices which I do not have at home, and it still tastes great!
Usually, butter chicken is paired with hot steamed rice or naan. I wanted to try something different so I served it on angel hair pasta (also, I did not realise that I forgot to replenish my rice for the pantry lol).
What Ingredients Do I Need?
You’ll be happy to know that you need just basic ingredients for this recipe!
- Chicken – For soft and juicy butter chicken, use chicken fillet or boneless, skinless chicken thigh.
- Yogurt – Use natural, unsweetened full fat yogurt or greek yogurt.
- Tomato Paste – Use canned tomato paste. Or if you do not have them, you can replace it with ketchup.
- Curry Powder – I use spicy curry powder for meat. If you’re also cooking for kids, you can use non-spicy curry powder to marinade, and then serve with chili flakes for your own adult portion, for some spicy kick.
- Garlic and Onion
I also added in some mushrooms, which is traditionally not used in butter chicken. You can opt to exclude it, just that I quite like how it paired with the chicken, and added some oomph, since the curry sauce is not a lot here.
Some butter chicken recipes also include adding cream for a thick curry sauce, which I omitted, so that it is lighter and less greasy. Personally I find the yogurt does its job well to thicken the sauce!
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How To Cook This Dish
This butter chicken dish is super, super, super easy to cook! It’s a slightly shortcut recipe, so you’ll find that the curry sauce in this dish would turn out lesser compared to the usual butter chicken recipes.
To make it, simply marinade the chicken at least 3 hours before hand, or preferably overnight. Heat up your pan and cook the chicken pieces, including the marinade. And then you’ll have piping hot and fragrant butter chicken!
So it’s great if you’re juggling with WFH duties and / or kids, while trying to prep meals for the family. You can split the tasks up into 2 days and it will seem easier to prep meal!
How Does The Butter Chicken Taste Like?
It has a rich, creamy texture – due to the butter and yogurt in the recipe! If you don’t like it tasting too buttery, you can replace the butter with cooking oil.
Also, unlike the usual spicy curry we eat in Singapore, this butter chicken dish has a milder, tangy, fragrant curry taste, thanks to the tomato paste, yogurt and curry powder in the marinade.
You probably won’t be expecting the butter chicken to taste spicy. It doesn’t taste spicy to me – so you might want to add chili flakes as you serve the dish, if you prefer a spicier kick to your food.
This recipe might also be a little saltier for kids. So if you are also cooking for the children, you might want to reduce the salt by a little. For adults portion, taste before you serve and add in some soy sauce to taste if required.
What To Serve With Butter Chicken
I used pasta to serve with my butter chicken, but traditionally, butter chicken is usually served with rice or naan.
For a healthier balanced meal, you can also serve this dish with some light and refreshing veggies, like salad or cucumber slices.
Easy Butter Chicken Pasta
- Prep Time: 20 Mins
- Cook Time: 20 Mins
- Total Time: 40 minutes
Description
This easy butter chicken pasta has tender and flavorful chicken meat, cooked in a tangy, spiced yogurt marinade. You don’t need many different spices for the butter chicken. Great for a quick meal! Save this easy to make meal for laters!
Ingredients
Butter Chicken
- 200g chicken fillet or boneless skinless chicken thigh
- 2 cloves of garlic, grated or crushed
- 4 tbsp tomato paste
- 2.5 tbsp natural unsweetened yogurt
- 2 tsp curry powder
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 1/2 onion, diced
- 10g unsalted butter
- 1 pack Shimeiji mushroom, cut (optional)
Pasta
- Choice of your pasta, prepared according to package
- Olive oil
Instructions
Butter Chicken
- Prepare chicken by cutting into bite-sized pieces.
- Place garlic, tomato paste, yogurt, curry powder, salt into a container or ziplock bag. Add in chicken and mix thoroughly.
- Let chicken sit in marinade, in the fridge, for at least 3 hours, or preferably overnight.
- Heat pan with butter. Saute diced onion till fragrant. Add in marinated chicken, along with the marinade sauce.
- When chicken pieces are cooked on the outside (ie. no more pink meat visible on the outside), push chicken to side of pan. Add in mushrooms and stir fry till soften slightly.
- Turn up heat to medium-high. Stir fry and coat the chicken pieces and mushrooms with sauce till well cook. Please ensure that you let sauce come to a boil (large bubbles), before turning down heat to simmer the sauce. Stir constantly.
- You will notice the color of the sauce/meat turn to a darker shade of orange and the sauce reduces to a thicker sauce. You can take the pan off heat when this happens.
Pasta
- Prepare pasta according to package
- Once boiled till al dente, drain pasta and toss in olive oil to prevent sticking and drying out.
- Serve pasta with butter chicken and sauce on top. Garnish with parsley if needed.
Notes
- You can use natural, unsweetened full fat yogurt or greek yogurt.
- If you do not have tomato paste (tinned), you can also replace with ketchup. You might need to use a little lesser salt if you do replace with ketchup.
- If you prefer a spicy curry, you can add in about 1 tsp of chili powder or cayenne pepper powder into the marinade. Or sprinkle with some chili flakes when you serve the dish.
- As we use the marinade to cook, please ensure you bring the sauce to a boil before turning down heat to simmer the sauce, to kill off bacteria that may be present in the marinade (from the raw meat).
Nutrition
- Serving Size: 2 Adults
Keywords: Curry
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