There are a few dishes that we particularly enjoyed eating out in our non-vegan times. One of those dishes was butter chicken. This creamy sauce and these hearty flavors are well burned into our taste memory.
Of course we looked around for a plant based alternative, but somehow we didn’t really like one.
So we did some trials and with a little effort, we found a very good plant based alternative to this Indian classic. If you are fine with reducing the chili powder, the kids (at least at our house) will also like to eat it . And basically you can’t go wrong with rice or vegan naan.
Vegan Butter Chicken
Servings: 4 servings
Equipment
- blender
- Sieve
Ingredients
For the tofu "like chicken"
- 200 g tofu (1 block, firm)
- ½ tsp garam masala
- 1 tbsp soy yogurt
- ¼ tsp salt
For the sauce
- 1 tsp plant butter
- 1 onion
- 1 clove of garlic
- 400 g tomatoes
- 1 tsp garam masala
- ¼ tsp chilli powder
- 80 g cashews
- 300 ml of water
- 1 ½ tbsp vinegar
- ¾ tsp sugar agave syrup
- 4 cardamom pods
- 1 tbsp plant butter
Instructions
- Express the tofu a little by wrapping it in a kitchen towel, for example. Then put a kitchen board with a few books or something heavy on it to squeeze the liquid out of the tofu. This can be set up and taken down again after at least 10 minutes, but also after 30 minutes.
- Now cut the tofu into large cubes. Put ½ teaspoon Garam Masala powder, 1 tablespoon soy yoghurt and some salt in a bowl and add the tofu to marinate.
- Preheat the oven to 180 degrees. Then place the tofu cubes on a baking sheet lined with baking paper or a baking mat. Make sure that the cubes do not touch each other.
- Bake the tofu for about 20-25 minutes until the pieces have become a bit crispy on the outside.
- Then take it out of the oven and let it cool down.
- While the tofu is baking, peel the onion and garlic and roughly dice for the creamy sauce.
- Remove the stalk from the tomatoes and also roughly dice.
- Next, put a saucepan on the stove and melt the teaspoon of vegetable butter. Sauté the onion and garlic for 3-4 minutes and briefly toast the garam masala and chili powder with it. Then deglaze with the tomatoes and add water, the cashews, cardamom, vinegar and some agave syrup or sugar.
- Let it simmer for 15-20 minutes.
- Now the blender or hand blender comes into play. Take this sauce off the stove and put it in the mixing bowl or a container in which the hand blender can be used.
- Mix or puree the sauce well and put back in the pot.
- If you like it particularly velvety or only have a hand blender, you can now rub the sauce through a sieve.
- Put the fine sauce again in a saucepan and briefly bring to the boil. If the sauce is too thick add a little more water.
- Dissolve the remaining butter in the sauce, add the tofu cubes and finally season to taste with some Garam Masal, sweetener, or salt.
- The sauce tastes best with rice or naan to dip.
