Butter Chicken
Servings 5 pint jars
Ingredients
- 5 regular mouth pint jars sanitized, with lids and rings
- 1 1/2 lbs boneless, skinless chicken thighs or breasts, cut into bite-size pieces
- 1 (16 oz) can crushed tomatoes
- 1 cup unsalted cashews
- 1 medium yellow onion quartered
- 4 cloves garlic
- 1 (2 inch) piece peeled fresh ginger
- 2 tbsp vegetable oil
- 1 tsp salt to taste
- 2 tbsp lemon juice
- 2-3 serrano chiles stemmed and seeded
Spices
- 5 bay leaves
- 1 tsp ground cumin
- 1 tsp ground coriander
- 2 tsp garam masala
- 1 tsp ground turmeric
- 1 tsp chili powder
- 1 tsp smoked paprika
- 1 tsp kasoori methi (dried fenugreek leaves) optional
Instructions
Prepare the cashews
- Place the cashews in a bowl
- Add hot water to cover the cashews
- After soaking for 30 minutes, drain the cashews
- Process in the food processor, adding water to create a medium consistency cream
- Set aside for later
Combine the vegetables into a paste
- In the food processor, add the onion, ginger, garlic, and peppers
- Process to a paste in the food processor
Prepare the jars for canning
- Set up the four pint jars near the cooking area with their lids and rings handy
- In the bottom of each jar, place one of the bay leaves
Bringing it all together
- Heat the vegetable oil in a medium stock pot over medium heat
- Add the vegetable paste and cook for two to three minutes until the mixture is brown, adding additional oil as necessary
- Add the tomatoes, cashew cream, and lemon juice and mix thoroughly
- Add the spices and season to taste
- Add the chicken
- Reduce heat to simmer
Canning the Butter Chicken
- Add canning rack to the instant pot and fill with ~2 inches of water
- Distribute the butter chicken evenly among the pint jars
- Make sure to leave 1 inch headspace in the jars, as this recipe tends to sputter which can lead to seal failure if overfilled
- Wipe the rims of the jars clean as necessary
- Apply lids and screw the bands to finger tightness on the jars
- Using the jar lifter, lower the jars in to the instant pot
- Secure the lid of the instant pot and make sure the pressure valve is set
- Program the instant pot to cook under high pressure for 1 hour and 15 minutes, and make sure to disable the Keep Warm setting
Wrapping up the process
- After the instant pot has finished cooking, be sure to let it come down to ambient pressure using the natural release cycle, do not try to do the quick release cycle as this can cause liquid to be forced out of the jars and potentially break the seals
- Once the instant pot is safe to open, open it and use the jar lifter to pull the jars out and place on a towel too dry and cool down
- If the rings on the jars are loose, they can be finger tightened again, carefully
- Leave the jars to cool, you should hear the lids popping as the pressure creates a seal on the jars
- After the jars have cooled, the rings can be removed and the jars are now shelf-stable and safe to store in a pantry to be eaten later
- If any jar failed to seal, it is safe to either eat immediately or reprocess in the instant pot, though you may need to replace the lid since it did not seal properly
Notes
Regular mouth jars:
Normally regular or wide mouth mason jars are interchangeable, and the only consideration is how many jars will fit in the instant pot (5 regular mouth, 4 wide mouth). Since in this recipe we want a bit more headspace at 1 inch and the yield is 5 jars, I recommend using regular mouth pint jars.
Yummy! Very much like I ate many times during my travels to Malaysia. This will become a permanent part of our pantry stash.
Could I do this in a presto canner on the stovetop, and if so for how long and what pressure?
Hi Mel, yes you can do this with a stovetop pressure canner. The time is the same (75 minutes), and you want to keep the pressure at 11 pounds pressure below 2000 ft or at 12 pounds pressure if above.