Earlier this year — just before The Great Confinement — I became obsessed with butter chicken, and in April tracked down the Delhi-based chef, Monish Gujral, whose grandfather invented the dish.
Since then, I’ve normalized my relationship to the dish, which has taken its place in our home as a favorite for those times when we crave easy-to-conjure comfort that also transports.
Following the conversations chef Gujral and I had about the dish and its history in April, we have stayed in touch, and in September he texted to say that Moti Mahal — the restaurant where Kundan Lal Gujral invented butter chicken — would soon be celebrating its 100 year anniversary. It opened in October 1920.
I suggested he proclaim the appropriate date in October to be World Butter Chicken Day, to be celebrated every year. After all, butter chicken is no doubt the most popular Indian dish in the universe. It needs a food holiday! The exact date of Moti Mahal’s founding is unknown, so Gujral chose October 20, the birthday of his own son, who Monish says “looks like his great-grandfather,” Kundan Lal.
Monish Gujral, with tandoori chicken — which his grandfather, Kundan Lal Gujral, invented | Photo courtesy of Moti Mahal
So there you have it: this coming Tuesday, October 20 will be the first-ever World Butter Chicken Day. (A bit of research led me to understand that’s how these food holidays get created: Someone simply creates them, and they either catch on or they don’t.)
#WorldButterChickenDay is an auspicious day, of course, to enjoy murgh makhani (butter chicken in Hindi), salute its origin — and (it struck us both) make a tax-deductible contribution to the United Nations’ World Food Programme or other nonprofit organization fighting global hunger.
With all the excitement around murgh makhani and its origins, it has also felt like the moment to revisit our Ultimate Butter Chicken recipe, my adaptation of Gujral’s original. Keeping as close as practicable to his recipe, published in his 2009 book, Moti Mahal: On the Butter Chicken Trail (later re-published in as On the Butter Chicken Trail, Ultimate Butter Chicken has been the gold-standard murgh makhani in our kitchen. However, it requires four hours of marination, leading me on occasion to reach instead for Urvashi Pitre’s excellent Instant Pot version.
That said, for all the ease and quickness of Pitre’s recipe, which gets to the table in 30 minutes, it sometimes leaves me missing the depth of flavor that marinated-then-roasted chicken — more like tandoori chicken — brings to the dish. (For the Instant Pot version, raw chicken is pressure-cooked in the sauce components.)
Back into the test kitchen I went, playing with murgh makhani, and I’m excited to debut a new, greatly simplified version: World Butter Chicken. It’s much much quicker to execute than Gujral’s excellent version, and if my extremely critical family is to be believed, it’s every bit as wonderful.
The secret of the recipe is compressing the original two-step, four-hour marination into a one-and-a-half step one-hour marination. The resulting chicken tandoori thighs are perhaps even better than the first iteration; I’d be thrilled to eat them even without the sumptuous butter chicken sauce.
Nipping three hours out of the marination time means it’s on the table in 90 minutes or less, an hour of which is unattended marinating time. That’s when you can make the cucumber raita and coriander chutney that are great to serve with it, and get basmati rice ready to cook. While the chicken thighs roast (20 to 35 minutes depending on their size), you can make the sauce and the rice.
Congratulations to Moti Mahal on its first hundred years, and many thanks to Monish Gujral and his family for the gift of murgh makhani.
Happy World Butter Chicken Day!