India's Best Butter Chicken is on the Streets of Delhi

[Chef Irani] I can feel the heart attack

about it come.

We are in Delhi, Old Delhi, specifically

in one of the craziest streets I've ever been

on in my life and I've been a lot of places.

We're here at Aslam Chicken.

These guys do butter chicken,

but not the butter chicken you're thinking of.

It's literally chicken drowned in butter.

Let's go take a look.

The chicken has to be cooked first

and it's gonna be cooked upstairs

at a completely different operation.

[speaking in Hindi]

That is a heap of chicken.

Fantastic.

Fantastic.

[speaking in Hindi]

Let's take it.

And this is how it's done in Old Delhi.

[Chef Rashid] 75 chicken.

[Chef Irani] 75 chickens in there.

He's got 225 pounds of chicken in there.

I'm not doing the lifting.

These guys do it twice a day.

This is like CrossFit with chicken.

It's amazing.

[Chef Rashid speaking in Hindi]

[Chef Irani speaking in Hindi]

So this is incredible.

We're at the fifth floor on the terrace.

It's actually quite peaceful.

I can see why they want to cook up here.

I'd want to cook up here too.

This is guerilla outdoor cooking.

It's beautiful.

So I'm standing here in front of the sigri,

and Rashid Bhai is insidiously fanning it

and just basing the heck outta me with the smoke.

But it smells amazing.

Within Muslim communities

and really in most of the world,

only bread is cooked in the tandoori oven,

in the clay oven.

Meats are cooked on the sigri, in the open grill,

and that's how you get that incredible sort

of charcoal flavor.

So he's getting ready to skewer the chicken.

The chicken skewering is happening over there.

These are leg quarters, leg and thigh quarters.

And he's putting about three pieces per skewer.

There's about 300 pieces here.

So he is gonna have a 100 skewers, I'm guessing.

The marinade is a trade secret.

I asked him what it was.

All he would tell me is that there's

about 14 spices in there.

He does have yogurt in the marinade,

which is traditional, but then also a lot of oil.

And I think the oil helps the marinade stick

to the chicken.

And also obviously when it cooks it's not gonna-

[Chef Rashid speaking in Hindi]

You see the secrets are slowly coming out.

There is an achaar in there,

the Indian style pickle,

which is usually made with a lot of oil,

a lot of mustard seed.

And he said it's a Simla chili.

Oh my god, I don't know how this guy's doing it.

My eyes are killing me right now.

Woof.

Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh.

Money shot.

Come on, let's go take a look at this.

This is incredible.

It's gonna add so much flavor

to this meat right now.

Just that live charcoal, the grill.

It makes sense that he's doing it up here,

'cause trying to do this indoors

or anywhere else, it would've been

just an absolute insanity.

The ventilation system right now

is right up there.

These fans are blowing the smoke

out mostly onto me.

Oh, that is hot.

That is hot.

This is not a gentle flame.

We're not smoking, we're not slow cooking.

We're searing fast.

It makes sense that we're searing fast

'cause he wants to lock in

all that flavor into the chicken.

Doesn't want a lot of dripping coming down.

You can see there's actually not a lot dripping,

it's just searing.

This is incredible.

That high heat and how close it is

to the charcoal is helping sear the exterior

without losing any of the moisture

or the juice from the inside of the chicken.

He's fanning to keep the flame going.

Also probably to get the smoke to sort

of really disperse and hit the meats.

And if you notice, he's spacing pretty

well even though he starts

off stacking them close together.

As he's moving, he's making sure he is spacing

it so that the heat's wrapping

around the chicken.

Drives me crazy when I watch cooks

just crowding their meat on a grill.

You gotta leave room

between your skewers for the heat

to envelope and for the smoke to envelope

and completely sear that chicken meat in.

Some of the chicken's

actually touching the charcoal

doesn't seem to be hurting it.

It's gonna give it glorious flavor.

Those are the gonna be the juiciest bits.

This is a traditional sigri skewer.

It's flat and thin,

it's thicker and the idea is that the skewer

itself is gonna heat up,

retain heat, and cook from the inside.

More importantly, it's flat so

that the meat doesn't just spin around on it.

If it was a round skewer,

the meat would just be spinning

every time you turned it.

This holds the chicken in place,

even the kebab in place.

And that way when you spin it,

it flips around to the other side.

So that's what he is using.

Oh, ho ho, ho, ho, ho, ho, ho ho.

Thank you.

[speaking in Hindi]

Thank you.

Oh my God.

Amazing, amazing. Amazing.

Masala is amazing.

That's got some heat.

It's that Simla chili you were talking about.

[speaking in Hindi]

That's freaking amazing.

And this is before he is even drowned in butter,

which we're gonna see soon.

This is just the straight up masala.

That's delicious.

This is like last memory

when your life flashes in front of you,

I really want that bite I put in my mouth

to be one of those moments that flashes

by right at the end there,

'cause it's ah, you can tell

how excited I am.

The fact that the foundational chicken

is so tasty and he's hamming it

up for me right now. Aslam Butter Chicken.

[Chef Irani] It is what's remarkable.

That's why this place is so special.

It's what is a base flavor like

and the base flavor's remarkable.

[Chef Rashid speaking in Hindi]

So he is bringing this down a temp.

He says the cool rooftop air,

the cool Delhi rooftop air is cooling this down.

[Chef Rashid speaking in Hindi]

He doesn't wanna put this water

still this hot in the fridge.

Everything is fresh, it's hot

and it's cooked in an open flame.

Even this chicken is gonna end up

back on a grill just before it's served

to a customer hitting an internal temperature

of close to a 100 degrees.

It's gonna be sanitary

and it's gonna be delicious.

Fascinating.

I just figured out what he's doing.

Took me a second.

He's pulling the chicken out from the middle

and stacking it around the edge of the tub

because this is gonna go in the fridge

to get cooled off.

And by moving the chicken to the side,

he's ensuring that it cools down

and doesn't just stay warm in the middle

and chilled on the outside, allowing the cold air

to circulate from inside also.

Pretty much every day I see something

that I've never seen before.

Yeah, I mean it's like a blooming chicken rose.

[laughs]

I love it.

We're gonna follow the chicken downstairs

and you're not gonna believe

what's gonna happen next.

I'll give you a hint.

It's better with butter.

So we're back downstairs on the street.

This is where the actual operation's happening.

The chicken that was cooked upstairs

just ended up over here.

And then from here it's gonna get cut up

by the master butcher, put on the grill

and then finished

to make the famous butter chicken.

And I love that he's skewering it

in exactly the same shape of the thigh.

So each piece is in order.

I wouldn't be surprised

if he's doing this intentionally

and it's done in a particular way.

He makes sure he goes to the leg bone this way

so that it stays on and doesn't fall off

and he gets Maximus surface area.

Jesus Christ.

I would cut my fingers off in about 10 seconds

at the speed at which he's going.

Obviously the outside was already seared,

but now he's gotta make sure

that the inside reaches up the right temperature.

So he's cooking hot and fast.

I mean, I can barely stand next to the flame.

I'm getting outta the smoke.

This is insane.

Okay, if possible, this fire is hotter

than the one upstairs.

And I think I know the reason why.

Because at this point they really wanna

make sure this chicken

is cooked through and through.

That chicken upstairs is cooked about 50%.

So that makes sense.

This is both a flavoring moment,

a seasoning moment, and a sanitation moment.

I've never seen a site like this in my life.

An entire pot of boiling butter

on an open street flame.

This is 500 grams of butter.

He gets a case of 30 of these.

Okay, 30 packets of five grams of butter,

30 per case of butter he is gonna go through.

I think there's more butter

by weight that this place goes

through than chicken by weight.

Clarifying butter in general

also just gives a really lovely flavor,

almost a nuttiness to the butter.

There's a reason that this faces the street.

That way people can not only see

what you're offering, they can see the quality,

they can see the technique,

and they can decide based on a 100 other spots

just like this, whether this is the place

they're gonna come at or not.

One order is two skewers.

That's a lot of meat.

I didn't expect two chicken leg quarters

for one order.

Okay, what's next?

Ah, it's famous chat masala.

Chat means to lick, like lick your hands,

'cause on the street you're eating

with your hands.

It's got black rock salt,

which gives this amazing funkiness,

and then cream, glorious cream.

One spoon,

two spoon.

What he's doing here is making sure

that the cream and the masala

really coat the chicken well.

And just to be on the safe side,

let's do some extra masala.

Here's the butter.

And he is gonna pour some, oh Jesus...

Okay, okay, okay.

That's a lot of butter.

And then there's more cream.

This is insane.

Wow okay, sir,

would you like some chicken with your butter?

That's incredible.

All right, let me show you

what's going on in here.

So the chicken came off the grill.

He hid it with a mixture of cream.

[speaking in Hindi]

A 100% cream, Amul cream.

And then as if that was not enough,

about a half a pound of butter,

the chicken's been drowned in.

Whoa.

I mean, honestly, I can't think

of a more exciting way to dig in.

They were kind enough to gimme

some Rumali Roti to go with this.

Rumali means handkerchief, literally.

And this is named Rumali Roti

'cause should be as thin as a silk handkerchief,

as a Muslim handkerchief.

And you should be able to see through it.

Hello, friends.

Can you see me now?

Alright, going in for my first bite,

I can feel the heart attack about it come.

So much butter.

It's delicious.

The unexpected part is how much the butter

hits you right in the face.

It's not in the background.

It's not subtle.

This is actually butter chicken.

Wow.

There's so much going on this bowl.

It is so rich, it's so decadent.

I mean, if chicken could be a dessert,

this would be it.

I mean, it's just the cream,

the butter, the spices, the seasoning

and the wood smoke, that charcoal,

I mean it just literally

suffuse the entire dish.

It's glorious.

It's a special treat.

You can't eat this every day.

I think these guys have figured out a way

to make chicken taste better than chicken.

This has reached the seventh plane

of consciousness of chicken.

The chicken is tender and moist and juicy.

I had no doubt about that.

And then I can taste obviously the chat masala,

which just adds another level of pang,

another level of umami to the whole dish.

The cream just coats it all, doesn't cover.

And that's a big difference here.

The cream's not hiding.

It's not disguising, it's accentuating.

And then the butter,

I mean the butter's just like a love slap

across the face.

It's one of the things I love about street food.

It looks simple.

It's affordable.

One would assume that it's easy, it's not.

It's extremely complicated.

Delhi claims to have invented butter chicken,

especially around the corner,

somewhere at Moti Mahal.

But I think this, if you're gonna call

it butter chicken,

is actually what butter chicken should look like.

No addition of tomatoes,

which is really a new world import

that was bought

with the colonial exchange to America.

So I can imagine well before the butter chicken

that we know of traditionally that's been served,

this is probably more authentic.

What else are you gonna call it?

Look at that butter.

Here's the question.

Could I serve this in the US?

I think the idea of seeing chicken floating in

so much butter might just freak people

out just purely from a health standpoint.

But if you just think of the craft

that we put in our bodies

with these hydrogenated vegetable oils

that everything is fried in,

including most stuff you buy

on the grocery store made in,

that's more likely to kill you.

So would this fly in America?

Probably not.

Should it?

Oh hell, yeah.