Camp Skillet Butter Chicken
Toasted spices, butter, and a foil-packet chicken. One pan, no fridge.
- calories
- 620
- weight
- 9 oz
- cal / oz
- 69
- protein
- 34 g
- serves
- 2, scales
- prep
- 10 min
- cook
- 20 min
- total time
- 30 min
- water
- none
- cost
- $$
Calorie and protein figures are my own estimates, good enough for planning a food bag and not meant as precise nutrition data.
- Dinner
- Canister stove
- Liquid fuel
- Campfire coals
- Car camping
- Basecamp
- Canoe / raft
- Gluten free
- Nut free
- One pot
- Pre-mix at home
- Shelf stable
- Basic
Ingredients
| Canned or foil-packet chicken | 12 oz | drained; thigh meat if you can find it |
|---|---|---|
| Butter | 3 tbsp | ghee keeps longer in heat |
| Olive oil | 1 tbsp | |
| Dried minced onion | 3 tbsp | |
| Garlic powder | 1 tsp | |
| Ground ginger | 1 tsp | |
| Garam masala | 2 tsp | |
| Ground cumin | 1 tsp | |
| Ground coriander | 1 tsp | |
| Ground turmeric | 1/2 tsp | |
| Tomato passata | 1 cup | shelf-stable carton or tube paste thinned with water |
| Powdered heavy cream or full-fat milk powder | 4 tbsp | stands in for double cream |
| Salt and black pepper | to taste | |
| Instant rice | 1.5 cups | optional, cooked separately or eaten after |
Method
- Melt the butter with the oil in a skillet over low heat. Do not let it brown.
- Add the dried onion, garlic powder, and ginger. Stir for a minute until the onion softens and smells like onion again.
- Add the garam masala, cumin, coriander, and turmeric. Stir them in the fat for 30 to 60 seconds. This is the whole point of the recipe. Raw spice in liquid tastes like dust.
- Pour in the passata. Bring it to a low simmer and let it thicken for five minutes.
- Stir the cream powder into a few tablespoons of the hot sauce in a cup first, then stir that back into the pan. Straight from the bag it clumps.
- Fold in the drained chicken and heat through, about five minutes. Salt and pepper at the end.
- Serve over instant rice, or eat it out of the pan.
Butter chicken survives the move outdoors better than most curries because nothing in it needs to be fresh. Onion, garlic, and ginger all work in dried form here, and the cream comes out of a bag. The chicken is precooked and shelf-stable, so the pan time is about building the sauce, not cooking meat through.
The order matters more than the ingredients. Spices go into hot fat before any liquid touches the pan, which is where the flavor actually comes from. Add the passata first and you get a thin tomato sauce with sand in it. The butter and cream powder are also the calories, so keep both.
Packing
Combine all the ground spices and the dried onion in one small bag or tin. Cream powder in its own bag. Passata carton, butter, and chicken packets go in the food bin.
Variations
- A carton of coconut cream replaces the cream powder and makes it dairy-free.
- Drained canned chickpeas instead of chicken, with vegetable bouillon in the sauce.
- A spoonful of tomato paste at the passata stage if the sauce is running thin.
https://www.baldhiker.com/keto-butter-chicken-recipe