Baked Butter Chicken

I ADORE butter chicken, but it's a rare treat, only about 2 times a year we go out for butter chicken at the local restaurant. It's just too calorie rich of a dish for me to splurge on it too often.

I came across this recipe in a What's Cooking magazine (Fall 2011), and immediately ripped it out and put it on my fridge. Today we finally tried it.

Not the loveliest of photos... it's a good thing I don't plate things in a restaurant ;).


Baked Butter Chicken

1/2 cup Miracle Whip Dressing
1/4 cup tomato paste
2 Tbsp Catalina Dressing
1 tsp garam masala (I used tandoori masala)
1 tsp ground cumin
1/2 tsp cayenne pepper
8 small boneless skinless chicken breasts (2lbs)
2 Tbsp chopped cilantro (I omitted)

Heat oven to 350 F. Mix first 6 ingredients until well blended. Pour over chicken in 13 x 9 baking dish. Turn chicken to coat evenly. Cover and bake for 40 minutes, or until chicken is done. Serve the chicken with sauce overtop and a sprinkling of cilantro.


It had wonderful flavour! It did lack the creamy richness, so I don't think it could fully replace going to our favourite Indian restaurant, but it was delicious in it's own way. We will be making this again! Conveniently, it takes about the same amount of time to cook as the rice. The photos with cilantro in the magazine look so much nicer, but both my husband and I dislike cilantro, and think it overpowers the flavour in most dishes.

The kids didn't give me a chance to try my naan bread recipe out this time... but I still plan to do that in the near future. Maybe for the Tikka Masala recipe I've been eyeing up.