Masterclass

Who is Kundan Lal Gujral?

You’d be hard-pressed to find a single individual more influential in global food than Kundan Lal Gujral. If you haven’t heard of him, you might be surprised to know that he created three of the most internationally popular dishes in Indian food today – tandoori chicken, butter chicken and butter dhal.

Originally from Punjab, Gujral started working as a chef at an eatery called Moti Mahal in Peshawar in about 1920, where he experimented with cooking skewered chicken in tandoor ovens. Previously, tandoors had been used almost exclusively for baking breads. His experiment was a hit, but not content with creating one world-beating dish, Gujral went further, using up his leftover tandoori chicken by cooking it in a rich tomato sauce to create butter chicken. Still with a bit of fire left in the tank, Gujral adapted butter chicken to a lentil version – butter dhal.

He relocated to Delhi after the British partition of the subcontinent, then opened a string of Moti Mahal restaurants, spreading the popularity of these dishes around India and the world.

Get it on the barbecue

Few of us have a tandoor at home, but quite a lot of us have a barbecue. You could cook your chicken in a frying pan, but adding little blackened char to the meat will make your butter chicken truly great. Get your barbecue searing hot and chuck the marinated chicken on in whole fillets. I don’t cut the fillet into cubes before marinating because the cubes will cook too quickly and not get enough char before they are overcooked.

Unlike the original butter chicken, which used leftover fully cooked tandoori chicken, I prefer to leave the chicken a little raw in the centre when barbecuing. Once it’s cut into cubes and mixed into the hot sauce, it will cook all the way through and not be dry and overcooked.

Use condiments

One problem with the Australian approach to shared cuisines is that while out at a Chinese or Indian restaurant, we order multiple dishes. But at home, we tend to cook just one. This means we don’t have the benefit of balancing our meal across different dishes.

Even if you’re not cooking multiple dishes, there’s still an easy way to balance your meal. Pickles, chutneys and other condiments are hugely important to Indian cuisine for this reason. Butter chicken is defined by its mild spice, slight sweetness and rich, creamy texture, so to balance that, I suggest adding a spicy and sour element such as hot lime pickle.

Pickles and chutneys also help with catering to eaters comfortable with different levels of spice. Butter chicken can be made quite mild to suit everyone, and those who like it a little spicier can increase the heat by adding their pickle of choice.

Butter chicken v chicken tikka masala

These two dishes are quite similar – both are built from grilled chicken in a tomato-based sauce – but they are quite distinct. Butter chicken is mild and creamy, while chicken tikka masala is often spicier and the sauce is more defined by tomato.

Indian dishes are often distinguished by their differing cooking styles and taste profiles rather than the specific individual spices used.

Find fenugreek

Dried fenugreek leaves (kasuri methi) may be the one ingredient in this recipe that you may not already have in your pantry, but it’s worth getting some even if you only use it for this dish. The dried leaf lasts longer than ground spices, and it’s readily available from Indian and Asian groceries. Its aroma is reminiscent of celery and onion, but with more earthy and herbaceous notes, and I think it’s essential to a good butter chicken. Once it is in your pantry, I guarantee you’ll be making your own butter chicken again and again.

Advanced moves

You can double or triple the quantity of sauce and freeze it in portions for another time. If you do that, you’ve essentially made your own simmer sauce, and anytime you want to make butter chicken it’s just a matter of grilling a bit of marinated chicken on the barbecue and adding it to the sauce you’ve already made.