The origin of butter chicken is subject to a legal dispute in India, so 1News reporter Corazon Miller tried one of the “original” dishes – and found it very different to the butter chicken most New Zealanders know.
There’s something comforting about digging a spoon into a fragrant bowl of the sweet, red curry, laden with morsels of boneless chicken chunks that many New Zealanders identify as butter chicken.
It’s a dish guaranteed to be on the menu at any Indian restaurant around town. And while it’s a crowd-pleaser, the modern-day version of butter chicken is generations away from its original.
The story of how it came to be, in the latter days of the British Raj, hit headlines earlier this year, as two Delhi restaurants took their bitter battle over the original butter chicken to court.
The proprietors of restaurants Moti Mahal and Daryaganj both say the dish was their grandfather’s idea.
1News reporter Corazon Miller took to the streets of Delhi to find out more about the beloved dish. (Source: 1News)
Whether it was Kundan Lal Gujral or Kundan Lal Jaggi who first made the call to put a rich tomato-based gravy into some leftover tandoori chicken – the basic butter chicken recipe – remains before the courts.
Given it could be years before the case is settled, I felt I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to try the "original" butter chicken while in Delhi.
Lucky for me, my news editors didn’t say no to the idea. Unfortunately, the team behind those who launched the lawsuit, Moti Mahal, did.
Through our local producer, the restaurant which boasts of having had India’s first prime minister among its customers declined our requests to be interviewed or to get a glimpse of their kitchen before we even landed in India’s capital.
But Daryaganj – run by Kundan Lal Jaggi’s grandson, Raghav, and his childhood friend Amit Bagga – was keen to serve up a dish of their original butter chicken, right alongside its modern incarnation.
The taste test
Corazon Miller is served a traditional butter chicken alongside a more modern version at Daryaganj (Source: 1News)
Served with aplomb, in some fine silverware, my first impressions of the original dish were of a darker and chunkier curry. It certainly didn’t look like the butter chicken I knew.
And as somewhat of a city girl who prefers to dissociate my meat from the animal, I was semi-perturbed to find the curry was not boneless. And while I will eat chicken on the bone, I prefer to be able to distinguish which bones I’m pulling out – something semi-difficult to do when it’s slathered in thick, dark sauce.
It also had the effect of giving the gravy a heavier, almost greasy texture that I’m not quite convinced I like.
But my personal meat preferences aside, the flavours were tasty. My initial dip into the curry with a torn morsel of naan complemented the gravy’s rich, smokier tomato taste. And where the modern classic tends to be sweeter, this dish gave an overall more savoury flavour profile.
The key to making the curry
A butter chicken is prepared at Daryaganj restaurant in Delhi (Source: 1News)
Bagga’s not shy about sharing the secrets to this 1947 dish, which starts by stripping the dish back to the basics.
"This was never boneless, so the curry was a little more eco-friendly," he said. "It’s a very coarse curry, it wasn’t smooth, because there was no blender at that time. And there was less creaminess, because there were no packets of cream available back then."
Traditional or otherwise, he said the other key is the tandoor.
"People make a butter chicken with a chicken which is maybe boiled or sautéed ... that’s not butter chicken, that’s just a chicken curry. So that’s the secret – it has to be cooked with a tandoori chicken."
While I couldn’t compare Daryaganj to its courtroom competitor, I was served a version of butter chicken that’s more akin to the modern classic.
Boneless chicken chunks were doused in a rich, sweeter butter curry. It was similar to those I’ve tried at Indian restaurants back in New Zealand.
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It had a nice blend of sweet and spice that enriched its flavour and won my vote over the traditional one – or maybe that’s just my dislike of meat on the bones talking.
Corazon Miller travelled to Delhi with the support of the Asia New Zealand Foundation.
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