Masala Paneer

This is a very versatile recipe. The recipe is very forgiving and flexible. You can adjust the spice level in your choice of chili and curry. It even improves in the fridge overnight.

We have made it twice and with a few tweaks. We omitted the sugar, increased to 4 cloves of garlic, and the double cream to 1/4 cup. We have eaten this masala paneer as a main with chapati, naan, and rice and as a side with white bean burgers. In the future, we’ll double the recipe and make it a pantry staple.

Paneer or no paneer, meat or no meat, I adore all kinds of curries. My eyes just close when I take in their aroma and their incredible flavor—just hand me a piece of bread and I’m ready to dig in. But I tend to “outsource” Indian dinners, so I was a happy camper when I was able to make this tasty masala paneer at home. This recipe was already straightforward and fast, and I had cooked basmati rice and naan in my freezer, so putting dinner on the table was very easy. (If I had no naan on hand, I would have made the Zanzibar Sesame Bread).

It was easy to strategize the steps, too. While the onions browned, I measured and prepped the other ingredients, and while the masala was simmering, I popped the rice in the microwave and naan in the oven.

My go-to tomatoes for any kind of sauce are plum tomatoes as they’re meatier and less watery, and they worked great in this recipe. With more basmati and naan in my freezer, I decided to make a second batch of just the sauce to freeze. When I’m ready for another Indian dinner, all I need to do is add paneer, chicken, or whatever vegetables I have.

The only thing I changed the second time around was that I added the spices with the onions to fry them in oil. (That’s what’s typically done in Indian cooking, yes?) It gave the curry a more complex and deeper flavor for sure. If you love a richer sauce, you could replace the oil with butter or ghee. No heavy cream? I think it can be skipped, or replaced with plain yogurt. Oh, another thing that I noted for next time: making the curry in my 3-quart pan and using an immersion blender eliminated the need to transfer the sauce to another container.

This is a bowl full of comfort. The fluffy cubes of paneer float in a richly spiced sauce you swear must have been cooked for hours. I was concerned adding the spices so late in the process would result in a weak flavor, but one taste proved those worries unfounded. Vegans shouldn’t pass up the opportunity to add this to their repertoire, which I think would be quite successful using tofu in place of paneer and using coconut cream in place of the double cream. I served it with cinnamon and clove pilau with cashew nuts from Meera Sodha’s “Made In India.”

I used 1 tablespoon sambal oelek to stand in for green chile pepper. Everything worked exactly as written, with the exception the onions, which needed much longer to achieve anything close to this color, though a higher heat could probably be used to slightly pan-fry the onions for a golden exterior in that time.

I had some the day it was cooked and some 5 days later. It reheats very well in the microwave. The flavors mellowed a little and I had to correct salt on reheating.