Journey to India Butter Chicken

Last Updated on September 28, 2023

EDITOR’S NOTE: Aldi sold a different frozen butter chicken entrée — one that came with rice — not long after selling the butter chicken that this post deals with. You can read our review of the butter chicken with rice here. 

My husband introduced me to Indian cuisine when we were dating. Ever since then, I’ve been hooked. One of our favorite restaurants is a locally owned Indian establishment that has a robust menu and also serves a great lunch buffet on the weekends. We like going to the buffet for chicken tikka masala, butter chicken, vegetable pakora, biryani, tandoori chicken, naan, rice pudding, and mango custard, among other dishes.

Chicken or lamb tikka masala is our favorite entrée at Indian restaurants, followed closely by butter chicken. Butter chicken is a curry dish made with a sauce of tomatoes and butter, and it’s commonly on the menu at most Indian restaurants I’ve eaten at. It was created at the Moti Mahal restaurant in the Daryaganj neighbourhood of Old Delhi in the 1950s, after the Partition of India.

If you like Indian food like my family does, one of your biggest challenges may be finding grocery store Indian food that is as good as what you’d get at a restaurant. You can purchase ready-to-heat butter chicken with rice from Trader Joe’s, which is a cousin to Aldi. It’s all right but nothing special and certainly not memorable enough to buy regularly. Aldi sells a butter chicken simmer sauce that is decent but still not restaurant quality. Years ago, Aldi also used to occasionally sell a frozen butter chicken and rice entrée that we found disappointing.

In more recent years, I’ve started experimenting some with cooking Indian dishes from scratch to try to replicate what we get at restaurants. I’m still willing to try new things from the grocery store, though. So when Aldi advertised a frozen butter chicken meal in the weekly ad recently, I added it to my shopping list.

Journey to India Butter Chicken cost $6.49 for a 16-ounce package at the time of publication. The box describes this as “succulent pieces of boneless chicken breast in a sauce of tomatoes, ginger, garlic, cream, honey & authentic spices.” This was made in Canada using domestic and imported ingredients. It is halal certified.

At the time of writing, this is an Aldi Find, so it’s only in stores for a short time. Each store gets one shipment, and after that sells out, it’s gone unless Aldi decides to bring it back at some point. Aldi does not offer online ordering for products that are not currently in stock at your local store. When this is in stock, you’ll find it in the Aldi Find freezer aisle.

Nutrition information and ingredients. (Click to enlarge.)

If you’re looking out for allergens, this contains cream (milk), and ghee (milk fat).

Glancing at the overall ingredients list, I thought this looked promising. The primary ingredients are tomato sauce and seasoned chicken. It also has a long list of spices such as ginger powder, cumin powder, garlic powder, cinnamon powder, cardamom powder, cloves powder, and more.

One package contains two 1-cup servings. One serving packs a lot of fat (including saturated fat) most likely from the cream and ghee, and this dish also has a fair amount of sodium. One serving has 310 calories, 21 grams of total fat (27% DV), 6.7 grams of saturated fat (34% DV), 110 mg of cholesterol (37% DV), 420 mg of sodium (18% DV), 10 grams of total carbohydrates (4% DV), 1 gram of dietary fiber (4% DV), 7 grams of total sugars, no added sugars, and 32 grams of protein.

The box has directions only for heating this on the stove top. It says to pour about 6 cups of water into a medium-sized saucepan and bring the water to a boil. Then submerge the bag of butter chicken into the boiling water and boil uncovered for 8-10 minutes. Then remove the bag with tongs, carefully cut open the bag, and empty the butter chicken into a serving dish. Check that the temperature is greater than 165 degrees.

I followed the directions and boiled the butter chicken in the bag for 10 minutes. When I poured it into a serving dish, it was still cold in the middle, so I microwaved it for 1 minute, which finally got it hot enough.

If I make this in the future, I might let it thaw overnight or for a few hours in the refrigerator and then pour the bag’s contents into a saucepan to heat, or I might pour the thawed contents into a microwavable bowl to heat. That seems like it might be healthier than boiling a plastic bag.

After boiling in the bag and microwaving for 1 minute.

I served this with some basmati rice and samosas (all from Aldi) for lunch. My family and I were pleasantly surprised at how good it tastes. It has an image of two chili peppers on the box, indicating that it is a bit spicy, but we didn’t think it was that spicy. It is plenty flavorful, though, with a creamy tomato-based sauce and a rich blend of spices and seasonings that make it taste as close to restaurant butter chicken as anything I’ve had. This has a lot of sauce compared to how many chicken pieces it contains, and it’s a ratio that is similar to what I’ve seen at authentic Indian restaurants. It’s great for serving with rice or naan to help soak up the sauce.

This is very good for frozen, and I will definitely buy a few more packages if they’re still in stock the next time I make an Aldi run.

The Verdict:

Journey to India Butter Chicken features boneless chicken breast pieces in a creamy tomato sauce loaded with spices. This is some of the best frozen Indian food I’ve had, and it comes a lot closer to tasting like it’s from a restaurant than most grocery store Indian food does.