Butter chicken and Saffron rice

I often made the Butter chicken and saffron rice in a big batch for midweek dinner and freezed left over for lunch later in the week.. I love the smell of Indian spices cooking :) the best is to leave the chicken marinated overnight, so the marinating gravy is properly soaking into chicken.. This is alternative from using tandoori chicken to cook this dish.. I usually use microwave rice cooker to cook my rice, if you don't have one you can use stove top method to cook the rice as well but need to stir it often or it could burn underneath and not cook in the middle.. 

Ingredients

For butter chicken

1kg chicken tight fillets, cut into chunk 

125g natural yoghurt

1 tsp tumaric powder

1 tbs lime juice

2 tsp sweet paprika powder

1 tsp cumin powder

2 tsp grated fresh ginger

2 cloves peeled garlic, crushed

2 tsp garam masala

50g butter

1 tbs cooking oil

1 medium onion, finely chopped

1 tsp ground cardamom

1/2 tsp ground cinnamon

1 bay leaf

420g canned tomato purée

150ml chicken stock 

250ml thickened cream

For saffron rice

2 cup Basmati rice

1 tsp saffron powder

2 tbs butter

2 cups chicken stock

1 tsp salt

Method

Combine yoghurt, lime juice, cumin, tumaric, garam masala, sweet paprika,ginger and garlic in a bowl, add chicken and stir well, cover and put I the fridge for few hours.

In the rice cooker or microwave rice cooker, combine rice, saffron powder, butter, chicken stock and salt..cook for 20 mins of high or until rice is soft and fluffy.

Heat the butter and oil in a pan over medium heat, place onion, cardamom and bay leaf in the pan, cook few mins until onions soften. Reduce heat to low. Add chicken and marinated gravy, tomato puree and stock, simmer for 15 mins. Stir in cream and simmer for another 15 mins until chicken is cooked. Remove from heat.  serve hot with saffron rice.