How leftover Tandoori chicken gave birth to North India’s signature dish?

Next time you dig into an indulgent serving of butter chicken with naan, keep in mind that this classic dish actually came about from a need for ingenuity as opposed to a need for extravagance. The dish that is now a staple menu item at restaurants all over the world actually began as a way to utilize some stale tandoori chicken.

How butter chicken turned leftovers into a culinary classic

The story begins with tandoori chicken. It is an excellent dish that is created with spices like cumin, coriander, turmeric, chilli, and garam masala, cooked in an oven built from clay called a tandoor. Various archaeological studies reveal that tandoors have been used for cooking purposes since 2600-1900 BCE in northwest India. Also, butter chicken got popularized in the first half of the 20th century.

Customers refused to eat the tandoori chicken that had dried out completely. Instead of throwing it away, the chefs dipped the remnants in a simple sauce made from tomatoes. The first sauce was made of crushed tomatoes, garam masala, chilli, and butter. The second sauce brought both moisture and taste, and created a tasty curry.

There is still a lot of disagreement regarding the origin of butter chicken. Some believe it originated at the Moti Mahal restaurant established in Peshawar in 1920. After India was partitioned in 1947, Kundan Lal Gujral and Kundan Lal Jaggi moved to Delhi and established another branch of the same restaurant with the help of businessman Thakur Dass Mago.

The Jaggi family says that the recipe came about one night when some unannounced guests ordered chicken curry. Since the cooks could not do anything else, they ended up using leftover tandoori chicken.

However, Monish Gujral, the grandson of Kundan Lal Gujral, gives a slightly different version of the origin of the recipe. Monish believes that the two dishes – tandoori chicken and butter chicken were invented by his grandfather.

Balance represents one of the most particular features of butter chicken. The sauce used in butter chicken preserves its sourness from tomatoes and creaminess from butter while remaining mild at the same time. It does not have too much sweetness or too much spiciness.

Over time, several cooks started to create their own interpretations of butter chicken by adding tomatoes, onions, garlic, honey, and nuts like cashews and almonds.

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