A makhani sauce built on tomatoes simmered with cashews, then blended and sieved until it is genuinely silky, enriched with an unapologetic amount of butter and a little cream. There is no onion in it, which is what makes it rounder and sweeter than tikka masala. The chicken is grilled separately so it brings a bit of char to a very smooth sauce.
6 Steps
Cut the chicken into large 5 cm pieces and mix with the yoghurt, lemon juice, grated ginger, crushed garlic, kashmiri chilli, garam masala and salt. Leave in the fridge for at least 30 minutes while you make the sauce, or overnight if you have the time.
Put the roughly chopped tomatoes in a pan with the cashews, ginger, garlic, split green chillies, kashmiri chilli, cardamom pods, cinnamon and 200 ml water. Simmer, covered, for 25 minutes, until the tomatoes have collapsed completely and a cashew crushes easily between your fingers.
Fish out the cinnamon stick and cardamom pods, blend the rest to a purée, then press it through a fine sieve. What stays behind is skin and seed, and it is exactly what makes a rough sauce.
Grill the chicken under the hottest setting on a rack for 10-12 minutes, turning once, until the edges blacken and the pieces are just cooked through. Rest them while you finish the sauce.
Melt the butter in a wide pan over low heat, pour in the sieved purée — stand back, it spits — and simmer gently for 10 minutes until glossy and deep orange. Stir in the cream, honey and the fenugreek leaf crushed between your palms, and season with salt.
Slide the chicken and its juices into the sauce and simmer for 5 minutes. A little butter pooling at the edges is correct, not a fault. Serve with naan and coriander.
Sieving the blended sauce is the step people skip and it is the difference between homemade and restaurant. Honey balances a sharp batch of tomatoes, so add it last and taste rather than measuring blindly.
Comments (5)
genuine question, how is this actually different from tikka masala?
no onion base, cashews for body and much more butter. smoother and sweeter.
halved it for two people and the sauce quantities scaled without any trouble
soaked the cashews in hot water first because my blender is ancient, still silky
good call, i should add that as a note for older machines
80g of butter looked like a mistake in the pan. it was not.
sieving the sauce is the step everyone skips and it turns out to be the whole thing