Butter Paneer Masala is a delicious dish made with simple ingredients and can be made in a short time.This dish goes well with Naan, chapati (wheat bread) or rice .This is one of the favorite dishes of my kids .In fact, any dish with Paneer (Indian cheese ) or any cheese for that matter and I can see the excitement at dinner.This is a very popular dish and seen in the menus of almost every Indian restaurant.
Butter Paneer
The paneer (Indian cheese) is readily available in Indian groceries or whole foods. Paneer can be also made at home by adding ½ cup of lemon to ½ a gallon of boiling milk and straining the curdled milk into a muslin or cheese cloth and removing all the water.The cheese can then be cut into cubes or desired shapes.
Ingredients
- 1 onion
- 3 ripe tomatoes
- 2 cups paneer (Indian cheese) cubed
- 1 tsp ginger garlic paste
- 3-4 cloves
- 1 inch cinnamon
- 2 bay leaves
- 1 tsp cumin seeds
- 10-12 cashew
- 10-12 raisins
- ½ cup milk
- 3 tsp heavy cream(optional)
- 1 tsp dried fenugreek leaves
- 3 tsp oil or butter
- 1 tsp red chilly powder
- ½ tsp turmeric powder
- ½ tsp garam masala powder
- chopped coriander leaves
- ½ lemon
Directions
- Grind the onion and tomatoes to a fine paste with minimum water in a blender.
- Soak the cashew and raisins in the milk for about 10 minutes and grind it to a paste.
- Heat a pan with oil or butter and add the spices cumin seeds, clove, cinnamon and bay leaves to it.
- Add the tomato onion paste and ginger garlic paste to the oil and fry it .You may want to close the lid of the pan to avoid any spills.Keep stirring occasionally until it turns into a semi solid paste and oil starts to leave the paste.
- Next add the turmeric, red chilly powder and garam masala powder and continue to cook.
- Add the paste of the cashew, raisins ,milk and little water to adjust the consistency of the gravy and simmer for a while.
- Next, add the paneer (Indian cheese) and powdered dried fenugreek leaves to this and turn off heat, once the paneer becomes soft.
- Garnish with chopped coriander leaves and squeeze half a lemon into it if you like.
- You may add heavy cream as well to get a rich flavor, I did not add it and it still tasted very yummy.
This sounds so good!
Thank you , it is a delicious dish!