Butter Chicken - The Easy Way

It would probably come as no surprise to you, if you've scrolled through my recipes over the last few years, that I like spicy food. The Aussie's mum was born and raised in India, so he was raised eating curry dishes. Usually, I make my version of his mum's recipe when I make chicken curry, but last night I wanted to try something different. I wanted to make Butter Chicken. I didn't want to run out and get ingredients I didn't have in the refrigerator, freezer or pantry, I heavily adapted the recipe from Pressure Cooking Today. Maybe I'm a bad Texan, but I rarely have jalapeno peppers on hand. Oh well. This was a winner in our book.

Pressure Cooker Indian Butter Chicken  (serves 4)

5 boneless skinless chicken thighs (one Costco pack)
1 can diced tomatoes
1/2 t ground chipotle pepper
2 cloves garlic
1/2 inch knob of ginger
2 T mild curry powder
1 T hot curry powder
1 t salt
1 t garam masala
1/4 cup butter
1/4 cup heavy cream
1/2 sour cream (I use this in place of Greek yogurt when cooking because The Aussie hates yogurt)

1 - trim the excess fat off of the chicken thighs, and cut them in to large bite pieces
2 - Put the tomatoes, ginger, garlic, chipotle, curry powders, salt and garam masala in a blender, and blend until fairly smooth. You don't want chunks of tomato in the sauce.
3 - Set your pressure cooker on brown. Add half of the butter. When it's melted, add the chicken pieces and brown them. This will take about 5 minutes per batch, and you may need to do a couple of batches of chicken. Note: The original recipe calls for all of the butter to be added, but the chicken wasn't browning, so I took everything out and added the chicken back in to brown. The remaining butter was added back in with the tomato sauce.
4 - When the chicken has browned, add the rest of the butter, and cook until it's melted.
5 - Add in the tomato puree and stir, making sure all of the chicken is coated.
6 - Cover the cooker and lock the lid. Select high pressure for 5 minutes. When the timer beeps that the 5 minutes is done, let the pressure come down naturally for 10 minutes, then do a quick release to drop it the rest of the way.
7 - Stir in the cream and sour cream (or yogurt if you're using it).  Taste the sauce, and add more salt if necessary.

Serve with hot rice and enjoy!

The Perfect Recipe For April

Since eating paleo is really big these days, I have been working on more meat recipes this spring. We usually do lamb on Easter, but I've decided to branch out this year. I'm not sure that this will fit in my pressure cooker. I may have to get out my Dutch oven. Or a really, really big rotisserie.  In the meantime, I am putting together a marinade with red wine, garlic, rosemary, thyme, pepper, and perhaps a bit of sage.  I'll let you know how it turns out.