Calories in Butter Chicken

The recipe cooks 250 g of chicken with 150 g of tomato, 40 g of onion, 2 tablespoons of tomato puree, 1 1/2 tablespoons of ghee, 1 1/2 tablespoons of cream and half a teaspoon of sugar, and divides it into 2 servings. One serving is half of that: 125 g of chicken with its share of gravy. No butter is listed, the fat being ghee and cream, and there is no cashew paste. A restaurant murgh makhani is built on generous butter and cream and often cashew, so it is safer to treat 377 kcal as the low end for this dish and not as a typical takeaway figure.

Fat supplies 57% of the energy, protein 32% and carbohydrate 11%. The protein, 30.1 g, comes from the chicken and is as high as in a plain chicken curry. What changes is the fat: 23.9 g, much of it saturated, because the gravy is finished with ghee and cream. The carbohydrate is mostly from the tomato, with only 1/4 teaspoon of sugar stirred into each serving. So the makhani gravy, not the meat, is what separates this dish from a simpler curry.

One serving is about 18% of a sedentary man's daily energy requirement and 23% of a woman's before any bread or rice. Butter chicken is nearly always eaten with naan or jeera rice, both of which add a good deal, so the plate can easily become the largest meal of the day. Two servings come to 754 kcal and 47.8 g of fat. A practical pattern is one serving, a plain roti or a small portion of rice, and a salad or a dry vegetable for the fibre the dish is short of.

Saturated fat is the thing to notice here. Ghee and cream are both rich in it, and even this modest recipe puts 2 1/4 teaspoons of each into a serving. A restaurant portion made with more butter and cream goes higher. As an occasional dish that is unremarkable. Anyone advised to limit saturated fat because of raised cholesterol or heart disease should ask their doctor or dietitian how it fits into their plan.