Butter Chicken, or A Good Way to Start the New Year

We got an Instant Pot around Cyber Monday and have been loving it. 

(It helps to go in with super low expectations, like it's just* an electric pressure cooker. It will not make dinner for you or, sadly, wash the dishes afterwards.)

(*Alex: "It's just chicken and rice.")

David christened our IP with this Butter Chicken recipe. Then, for Friendsgivingmas, I tweaked the recipe and made it vegetarian. It was a huge hit and a couple of friends have since asked for the recipe so I'm posting it here with all my modifications. 

Instant Pot Butter Chicken (or Butter Vegetables)
adapted from Jo Cooks

6 tbsp butter
12-16 cloves garlic minced (1 to 1.5 heads) (see Note below)
5 T ginger minced (again, see Note)

4 tbsp tomato paste

1 28-oz can whole tomatoes, blended (yes, in your blender #sorrynotsorry) with liquid

2 t salt

2 T garam masala
2 T ground coriander 

2 T paprika, smoked if you have it.

2 t ground cumin 

2 t turmeric
3 lbs boneless and skinless chicken thighs, cut into 1.5 inch pieces OR equivalent amount vegetables (my favorite is a head of cauliflower, ~3 yukon gold potatoes, and a 10-oz package of frozen peas and carrots)
2 cups heavy cream (oh yeah, baby)
1 bunch cilantro, roughly minced

Note: Because of the large amount of garlic and ginger, I recommend using a food processor to grind together the ginger and garlic. First, peel the ginger and chop into smaller pieces, then add to processor. Slightly smash garlic cloves to remove peels, then add cloves to food processor. Process until you have a paste, scraping down the sides as necessary.

Turn on Instant Pot to saute setting. Add butter to pot. When melted, add ginger-garlic puree and saute for a few minutes until fragrant. 

Add tomato paste and saute together with ginger-garlic to impart a deeper flavor into the sauce. Then add blended tomatoes, salt, and spices. 

At this point, if you are making the chicken version, add chicken pieces, close and seal the pot and cook for 5 minutes on Poultry seasoning. Do 10 minutes of natural release, and then complete with a Quick Release. Stir in heavy cream and use the Saute mode to keep the sauce simmering. Stir in chopped cilantro before serving.

If you are making the vegetarian version, add cubed potatoes (large-ish chunks?) and cook on a pressure setting (like Meat/Stew? I'm still learning the IP, but I believe all the auto settings besides rice use the same high pressure setting) for 5 minutes. Do 10 minutes of natural release, then complete with a Quick Release. Switch to saute mode and add cauliflower cut into florets, and bag of frozen peas and carrots. Cook until tender. Then stir in heavy cream and chopped cilantro.

Serve over rice and/or naan. 

P.S. Don't forget my friend Kayla's tip to save leftover tomato paste. Scoop it into tablespoons onto a small sheet of parchment paper and freeze. When it's frozen (or at least par-frozen), add them to a little baggie and throw it in your freezer. Label the bag - you think you will remember what it was but you won't. The dollops come in so handy when you just need a tablespoon or two. 

An aside in itself

I'm writing this post as I finish the rest of the meal and as the dishes are still sprawled on the table from dinner. That's how important this is.

Yes, that's a Subway napkin.

The thing I want to tell you about today is ludicrous, actually. It's really an aside in itself and should be relegated to an extremely long "Lisa footnote."* Because I'm not sure you would actually want to make the thing I'm going to spend most of this post talking about. I promise that at the end I will tell you about something you should make, but because I love to tell ridiculous stories, I'm going to make you sit through this first.

*   *   *

My brain is always asking questions and generating weird ideas. (Strengthsfinder says that I'm "ideation." And "input." Gahh!) Often when I come up with what I think might be an original idea, I check the internetz to see if anyone else has thought of it before, and if so, whether it works. (These ideas could run the gamut of how to keep kitchen towels clean, has anyone ever cut holes out of a sleep sack to make it footed, how do you implement GTD as a homemaker--possibly using Excel. I would show you a screenshot of my search history, but that could be embarrassing.)

If I don't see my idea after a couple of Google searches, I assume that either (a) it's a very dumb idea, or (b) I'm an absolute genius. I'm not sure there are any other possible logical conclusions.

Today, among other things, I wanted to know if anyone has ever made chicken biryani in a rice cooker - without frying any part of it. Here are the permutations I searched:

"chicken biryani in rice cooker"

"chicken biryani in rice cooker no stovetop"

"no-fry chicken biryani"

"raw chicken in rice cooker"

"make chicken biryani without frying"

Alas, I found no meaningful results to my searches, so it was time put the idea - and me - to the test. I mean, if an amazing dish could be made decently well without very much work, wouldn't someone else have already made it??

Anyway, so whenever I'm trying to figure out if a "cheater" method works, I purposely do every step the laziest way possible. Because if I were to do one thing un-lazy - such as to sear the chicken first - and the rest of it the lazy way, I wouldn't be able to tell what caused the dish to work or not work. So in the name of the Scientific Method, I do everything like a bachelor. In this case, everything was thrown into the rice cooker - no stove time, and hardly any chopping.

I still used my brain, though, and marinated the chicken with salt and curry powder hours before I wanted to "set it and forget it."

Then, an hour and a half before dinnertime, I threw the following into the rice cooker: 3 cups Jasmine rice (unwashed, don't tell my mom!); water/chicken broth (to just under the correct level on the cooker; I'm not Asian enough to do the knuckle method, but you could definitely do that-- note: I add the water before the rest of the ingredients); 2.5 lbs chicken thighs/drums, marinated; a few slices of onion; 1 green chile, sliced in half lengthwise; 1 t each, ginger and garlic, minced; a bunch of turmeric (maybe 1-2 t?); 3 cloves; 3 cardamom pods, lightly crushed; 1/2 t whole black peppercorns; 1 t salt (if using water or unsalted broth).

I even threw in cilantro stems to "scent" the rice. So fancy.

And then I hit "start."

It turned out surprisingly well. The chicken was moist and the rice was flavorful, spicy. The only thing I would change is to use just slightly less water (it was a little sticky) because the other ingredients let out water, and to serve it with raita.

Verdict: Tasty, but I'm not sure I would call it biryani, lest your Indian great-grandmother roll over in her grave. But for a bachelor dinner that was ten times more delicious than it should have been, considering the work that went into it, A-plus.

I'm not posting a picture because biryani is not photogenic. (Even when it's made the real way.)

*   *   *

Anyway, so like I said at the beginning of the post, I'm not sure this is worth your making, easy as it is. But for the morbidly curious, I had to tell you the results of my experiment. Now that you've read my long story, here's what you should make.

I have long loved the Five-minute Indian-style cabbage dish I wrote about once here. But today I had some wax and green beans from our CSA so I decided to sub them in. And I think they turned out even better than the cabbage version.

This rendition was of my own devising. It wasn't already on Google, so it must mean I'm brilliant.

Five-minute Indian spiced green beans

inspired by Herbivoracious 

1 lb green beans, trimmed, and cut into 1.5 inch lengths (I had a mixture of wax and green, from our CSA)

1 T black mustard seeds

1/2 t each, turmeric and cumin

a touch of cayenne if you're not serving a baby, too

3/4 t salt

Heat oil in a pan over high heat. Add mustard seeds and turn heat down to medium-high. As they pop, add spices and saute for 30 seconds. Then add beans and salt, and saute 1 minute, then add 1-2 T water/broth, and saute another 3-4 minutes until crisp-tender. 

P.S. Aaand the obligatory baby picture:

Blogger, why you gotta be so obnoxious? I hate when the photos don't turn. (David says, "Theo turns heads, so it's okay.")

P.P.S. A few randoms I have been saving for a post. I have been saving up to be thematic, but I guess that would be not-the-point of randoms.

• Have celery languishing in the fridge? Make this celery stir-fry. (I definitely think the word "languishing" was invented for celery. It's like the only thing it does. Languishes.)
• An article on decluttering. 
• Mexican polenta pie. Was maybe gonna blog about it... The filling as written was meh, but the concept of polenta and cheese melted over was worth sharing. 
• Making plans is difficult nowadays. Excuse the minor (albeit censored) profanity. My favorite line: "I wasn't expecting all this predictable rush hour traffic."
• Baked spaghetti. Do it. Way more than the sum of its parts. Definitely better made with refrigerated spaghetti (just like fried rice is). Throw in tomato bisque if your husband obtains you a free lunch at the hospital and you manage to have leftover soup.

___________________________________________
* I just named this a "Lisa footnote." In case you hadn't figured it out already.

Naan sequitor

This recipe was inspired by a random book I found at the library called 150 Best Indian, Thai, Vietnamese and More Slow Cooker Recipes. The title definitely piqued my interest and I do love my slow cooker, but some of the recipes weren't really ones in which the benefit of the slow cooker outweighed the cost of having to wash it afterwards. ;) However, I definitely think the recipes were spot-on, and I jotted down a few to modify for the stovetop.

The main recipe that caught my eye was one for a creamy chicken kofta curry. I wondered why I hadn't made kofta before. Essentially they are just meatballs, and as Molly taught us, meatballs can be delicious without the difficult work of frying them.

Meatballs plus curry. That's a big win, right?

As I was telling David about this one night before we fell asleep, he asked, "Isn't 'beef kofta meatball' redundant? Couldn't you just say 'kofta beefball?'" Haha, I have the best husband ever.

(Side note: Our friend Jeremy's pet peeve is when people say "chai tea latte" - definitely a redundancy if I ever heard one. But if you're going to have redundancies, I'd say, let's have some beef kofta meatballs with some chai tea lattes. Yuuuum.)

Beef kofta meatball curry

adapted from book mentioned above, plus the inspiration of Molly's recipe also mentioned above

for the meatballs
2 slices white bread, processed (in food processor) into fresh breadcrumbs
1/3 cup milk
1 T garlic, minced
1 T ginger, grated
1 T curry powder*
1/4 c chopped cilantro
1 3/4 lb ground beef

for the curry
1 T olive oil
3 T butter
1 onion, diced
2 T each garlic and ginger, minced/grated
2 T curry powder
1 14-oz can diced tomatoes
1 cup chicken broth
3/4 cup whipping cream (or heavy cream, for the more indulgent)
more cilantro, for garnish

In a medium bowl, combine breadcrumbs through cilantro, then mix in ground beef. I prefer to use a gloved hand to really knead everything together. Let the meat mixture sit and marinate while you prepare the curry sauce.

Using your favorite pan for this sort of thing, saute diced onion, ginger and garlic in olive oil and butter. Add curry powder and fry until fragrant. Add diced tomatoes (and juices) along with chicken broth and bring to a boil. Lower to medium -- or whatever is a comfortable temperature for dropping in meatballs without getting splattered.

Using your hands (moisten them if the process gets sticky), roll the meat mixture into rounds of your desired size. (I love doing tiny meatballs - they cook faster, and you get to eat more of them. Double win.) Drop them into the sauce, gently stirring as needed to create more room.

Let the sauce simmer until the meatballs are cooked. It can cook longer if you finish before it's time to eat.

Before serving, stir in the cream and garnish with cilantro. Serve over a steaming, fluffy bed of basmati (or Jasmine) rice. Naan if you have it. (One day we are going to open a restaurant called Naan Sequitur.)


* Yes, it's kind of lame for me to say "curry powder" because really, what does that mean? The best curry powders are custom-blended. What's not lame is that my mother-in-law personally blends curry powder for me and mails** it to me. (!) I have to ask what's in her blend because it's amazing. I'm pretty sure it has cumin, lots of coriander, and turmeric. I'll follow-up when I find out the rest. Or maybe it's a family secret and you'll never know.

** Double-not-lame: when my mother-in-law sends curry powder with homemade kimchi using overnight and the system does not deliver in time and her money is refunded!***

*** Okay, just had to put asterisks within asterisks to be crazy. After all, this post is titled "Naan Sequitor." And these posts happen during naptime so they are written really quickly and crazily!