Peanut Butter Chicken

Four weeks to the wedding and I woke up Monday with a very specific kind of realization: I have been engaged for almost a year and in that year a global pandemic has continued, I have taught my students through the hardest school year in my professional life, I have been vaccinated, I have repainted my kitchen warm ivory, I have made soup approximately one hundred times, and I am about to get married at 26 in a VFW hall with homemade food and a family that has been making this work for me since before I was old enough to know how much it matters.

That realization hit me at 6 AM with the coffee in my hand in the warm ivory kitchen and I started crying in a good way and Ryan came in from the bedroom and asked what was wrong and I said nothing is wrong and he said okay and made me another cup of coffee. That is us. That is the whole thing.

This week I made a full pot of chicken tikka masala, which I have been making for years but which I made this week with a focus and a care that felt celebratory. Good butter chicken tomato sauce, coconut cream, a full spice bloom in the oil before anything else, bone-in chicken thighs because they stay moist, served over basmati with raita and naan from the Indian grocery near school that I have been buying from for three years. Ryan ate two bowls and said it was one of the best things I had ever made. I told him I had been making this for years. He said he had been meaning to say so for years. Good enough.

Blog update: I wrote about the four-week countdown and the homemade wedding food, and the response was one of the warmest comment threads I have ever received. People sharing their own homemade wedding food, their own family cooks who made the reception table. The thread has been going all week. I keep reading it. People are generous with their memories when you offer them a place to put them.

I have been leaning on rich, saucy chicken dinners all year — something about the act of building a sauce from scratch, watching it come together, feels like the right response to a hard season. This peanut butter chicken is the recipe I turn to when I want that same depth and warmth without the full afternoon commitment: savory, a little sweet, deeply satisfying, and the kind of thing Ryan will eat two bowls of without being asked. If you’ve been making your own version of this kind of meal on repeat and wondering whether it’s worth writing down, I’m here to tell you it is.

Prep Time: 15 min | Cook Time: 25 min | Total Time: 40 min | Servings: 4

Ingredients

1 1/2 lbs boneless, skinless chicken thighs, cut into 1-inch pieces
1 tablespoon olive oil
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 teaspoon fresh ginger, grated
1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes (or to taste)
1/2 cup creamy peanut butter
1 cup chicken broth
3 tablespoons soy sauce
1 tablespoon honey
1 tablespoon rice vinegar
1 teaspoon sesame oil
2 green onions, sliced, for garnish
Chopped roasted peanuts and fresh cilantro, for garnish (optional)
Cooked rice, for serving

Instructions

Sear the chicken. Heat olive oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Add the chicken pieces in a single layer and cook, undisturbed, for 3–4 minutes until golden. Flip and cook another 2–3 minutes. Transfer to a plate and set aside.
Build the aromatics. Reduce heat to medium. In the same skillet, add garlic, ginger, and red pepper flakes. Stir and cook for 1 minute until fragrant, scraping up any browned bits from the bottom of the pan.
Make the peanut sauce. Whisk together peanut butter, chicken broth, soy sauce, honey, rice vinegar, and sesame oil in a small bowl until smooth. Pour into the skillet and stir to combine with the aromatics.
Simmer and finish. Return the chicken to the skillet. Bring the sauce to a gentle simmer over medium-low heat and cook for 10–12 minutes, stirring occasionally, until the chicken is cooked through and the sauce has thickened to a glossy, coating consistency.
Serve. Spoon chicken and sauce over cooked rice. Garnish with sliced green onions, roasted peanuts, and cilantro if using. Serve immediately.

Nutrition (per serving)

Peanut Butter Chicken — The Recipe I Reach for When the Week Asks Everything of Me