Tandoori Chicken Makhani Burger
The chain’s best-known chicken burger: a tandoori-marinated chicken patty with a creamy makhani sauce and vegetables in a toasted bun. Makhani is the buttery tomato gravy of butter chicken, which by the usual account was invented to use up leftover tandoori chicken, so putting the two together in a bun follows the dish’s own logic. It was already on the menu in 2021.
The story
Makhani sauce comes from butter chicken, or murgh makhani, credited to Kundan Lal Gujral and Kundan Lal Jaggi, Punjabi refugees who came to Delhi from Peshawar after partition. At their Moti Mahal restaurant in Daryaganj, Old Delhi, they popularised it in the 1950s by simmering leftover tandoori chicken in a tomato and butter gravy. Who invented it is still disputed: in 2024 Gujral’s grandson sued the Jaggi family, now running a rival restaurant, and claimed the dish was first made in Peshawar in the 1920s or 1930s. The burger keeps both halves of the original, the tandoori chicken and the makhani.
What’s inside
- tandoori chicken patty
- makhani sauce
- vegetables
- toasted bun
Make it at home
There is no copycat of the Tandoori Chicken Makhani Burger yet. Until there is, these recipes on the site come closest to it, judged by what goes into the bun.
- Shares chicken
Chimichurri Chicken Burgers - Shares chicken
Chicken Burger (Natalia) - Shares chicken
KFC Chicken & Donuts Sandwich (Copycat) - Shares chicken
ABQ Hot Chicken Sandwich
Similar burgers at other chains
Built around the same things as the Tandoori Chicken Makhani Burger.- Dicos · chicken
SignatureCrispy Chicken Burger - Burger Singh · chicken
SignatureAmritsari Murgh Makhani Burger - Q Burger · chicken
SignatureCrispy Chicken Thigh Burger (卡啦雞腿堡) - KFC · chicken
Chicken & Donuts Sandwich
More from Wat-a-Burger
About Wat-a-Burger
Wat-a-Burger was started by an airline pilot. Rajat Jaiswal, who has logged more than 7,000 flying hours, built the business in his time between flights with his childhood friend Farman Beig, who had come back from business studies in the UK in 2015. The company was registered on 14 February 2016 and opened its first outlet in Noida, just outside Delhi, the same month.
Outlets in cities across India, most of them franchises outside the big metros.
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