Butter shrimp

I have added and removed this Indian Butter Shrimp recipe from our weekly meal plan so many times I lost count.  But I finally made it!

I made a few tweaks to make it dairy free, including swapping in Earth Balance for the butter and using this plain forager cashewgurt instead of plain cow milk yogurt.

I vividly remember being underwhelmed the first time I tried forager’s cashewgurt (OMG that was so long ago but feels like it was yesterday)…it’s super runny which is not how I like my yogurt.  That said, it was THE ONLY non dairy plain yogurt option at the store.  Ugh.  It’s times like this that I wish I lived near a WF because having so few alt milk options (for cheeses, yogurts, etc) is so annoying.  Anyway, since I wasn’t buying it to eat as is – rather using it in a recipe I figured it would be fine.

It was for the shrimp marinade and it worked well enough.  They hung out in this lovely aromatic spiced sauce for several hours because I made it at nap time.

Half way through making the sauce I realized we needed more tomatoes so I went and picked more.

So I wound up using double this amount thereby using up all the ripe ones we have!  This is the first time all summer that our counter isn’t overflowing with tomatoes, so either we are getting faster at eating them or they are slowing down.

This sauce smelled divine as it simmered away.  Then I put the lid on it and left it on the warm setting until dinner time.

I’m not entirely sure why it’s an instant pot recipe aside from the fact that it’s from an instant pot book, because it could easily be made on the stove.  That said it was nice to leave it on the warm setting and not worry about it.

Right before serving I added the shrimp.  They were already cooked, so it was just to heat them up and mix everything together.

I had basmati rice in the rice cooker.

And allllllmost forgot the cilantro!

Phew.

The other subs I made to the recipe were using coconut milk in place of heavy cream, garlic infused olive oil instead of minced garlic, and fresh tomatoes instead of canned ones.

I could probably have used ghee instead of Earth Balance, but I’m not sure if that would have overpowered the dish.  For me, ghee has a really distinct flavor, and while I like it, I have no clue how 1/4 cup of it would be in a recipe.

So if you still don’t have this cookbook by Melissa Clark, consider this my 20th attempt at convincing you that it is awesome and worth buying.