Instant Pot Butter Chicken Curry

INGREDIENTS:
• 1 tablespoon canola oil, divided
• 4-5 chicken breasts, chopped into bite-sized pieces, or an equivalent amount of chicken thighs if dark meat is your jam; you do you
• 2 medium yellow onions, finely chopped
• 2 teaspoons ground ginger
• 2 teaspoons ground cumin
• 2 teaspoons ground coriander
• 3 teaspoons ground turmeric
• 2 teaspoons curry powder
• 2 teaspoons paprika
• 1 teaspoons chili powder
• 4 cloves garlic, minced
• 3 1/2 cups tomato sauce
• 4-6 cups or whatever of fresh baby spinach
• 1 can coconut milk
• 2 tbsp butter (optional, but recommended)
• 1/2 teaspoon Kosher salt, but if it doesn't have as much flavour as you think it should, toss in some more at the end
DIRECTIONS:
Start your jasmine rice. Yeah. Jasmine. If you can get it, it's worth it for curry. I use a rice cooker because I'm incompetent but love rice. Ignore it until it tells you it's done, then pat yourself on the back for pressing a button correctly. I'm putting this here because I always forget the damn rice.
Add 2 teaspoons of the canola oil on high heat in a large skillet. Or whatever other high-temp oil you want. Don't use olive oil. Olive oil's for salads. It can't take the heat you're throwing at it.
Add the chicken and sear as best you can on all sides. Remove once it's seared, but not cooked all the way through. Do it in two batches if you need to, to avoid crowding the pan. ("Maybe my pan's big enough?" No. It probably isn't. If you got cocky and effed up and find that there's too much liquid in the bottom of the pan so that it's not browning, drain it and do your best, because we're not Martha Stewart, we're Bob Ross, and we only have "happy little accidents".)
Remove the chicken and put it in a bowl somewhere. Protip: if your kitchen's small, toss it into the microwave. Do not turn on the microwave.
Add the remaining teaspoon of the canola oil to the skillet with the onions. Or add a little more because you forgot to divide the canola oil in the first place. Nobody's here to judge you.
Cook the onions for 5 minutes on medium heat, stirring occasionally. Why five minutes? No reason. You cook those onions however you like, because this is your curry, dammit. Just don't burn them, and make sure that they look like heat has been in their general vicinity, and you'll be fine.
Put the ginger, cumin, coriander, turmeric, paprika, curry powder, and chili powder in a separate bowl. Don't add them to the pan until you've got them all together first, because by the time you'll get the chili powder in the pan, the ginger will be burnt. You'll think, "Holy hell, this is more spice than I've ever seen in one place at the same time." Don't worry about it. It'll taste good. Yes, you really do need that much.
Add them all at the same time, and then throw in the garlic quickly. Stir them around so that the onions look like they rolled around in the sand after swimming in the ocean. It's going to look weird, but keep stirring, and scraping up the spices from the bottom of the pan. This is also when all the smells will hit you. Holy crap! You're cooking something fancy! Take that, third grade teacher who said you'd never amount to anything!
After stirring frantically for 30 seconds while panicking that surely you're letting something burn and why are you heating dry things this makes no sense, then add in the tomato sauce.
Mix to combine until you feel like you're maybe not a failure and the stupid recipe told you to do it this way so it's not like it's your fault if it's bad anyway.
Put in the salt and butter, because high blood pressure and cholesterol are the least of your worries if your kids don't get supper.
Add the coconut milk and chicken back to the pan and stir them together because mixing is what makes us better than the animals. Let it sit until the chicken's cooked through.
Toss in the spinach so you can feel like a good parent, and stir it in until it gets over itself and settles the f*ck down into mediocrity like the rest of us.
Garnish with cilantro and chili peppers if you hate yourself.

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