What is Palak Paneer?
New Palak Paneer Recipe for delicious & restaurant like palak paneer at home. Palak Paneer is a popular Indian dish – creamy and full of flavours. In short, we cook Indian Cottage Cheese in creamy Spinach puree with authentic Indian spices to make a delicious Palak Paneer. It sounds easy but it needs little bit of technique to ensure your Palak Paneer is not soggy or don’t go runny with water or don’t get darker in colour.
A well cooked Palak Paneer is quite a versatile dish and it goes well with naan, roti, paratha as well as rice. Typically Palak Paneer is a North Indian curry. North Indian dishes typically carries a perception of being rich with ghee and oil. But rest assured the Shveta’s Palak Paneer Recipe is quite healthy. Please don’t miss out on the tips and tricks at the end of the recipe to ensure your palak paneer is restaurant like.
Is Palak Paneer Healthy?
If we look at the two main ingredients, its Palak (spinach) and Paneer (Indian Cottage Cheese). Palak is low in calories, rich in mineral, vitamins, fibre and water – typically making it great weight loss food. On the other hand Paneer is protein rich. So the combo of these two ingredients and carefully balancing the spices can over all make Palak Paneer Recipe healthy.
Palak Paneer Vs Saag Paneer?
And no – Palak Paneer is not exactly Saag Paneer. Though these two recipe names are interchangeably used at restaurants, Saag curry ingredients can include green leafy vegetables including spinach (palak). The curry for Palak Paneer on the other end predominantly is made of only spinach. So the Palak Paneer Recipe is different to Saag Paneer.
So here we go – the New Palak Paneer Recipe…
Ingredients – Palak Paneer Recipe
Step By Step Guide – Palak Paneer Recipe
- Clean and wash spinach and cut in large pieces.
- Add spinach to a pot of boiling water. Blanch it for 4 to 5 minutes
- Take spinach out and immediately pour cold water.
- In a small bowl, soak cashews in hot water for about 10 mins.
- Now add blanched spinach, soaked cashews, tomato, 2 garlic cloves, ginger and green chillies to a blender.
- Puree it to a smooth paste and keep aside.
- In a pan, add oil and ghee. Once hot add cumin seeds, bay leaf and remaining finely chopped garlic.
- Cook for a min or so, or until when garlic starts browning.
- Add finely chopped onions and cook it for 2 to 3 minutes until soft and translucent.
- Now add the spinach puree and mix it.
- Cook for a minute or two and then add turmeric powder, red chilli powder and salt.
- Add ½ cup water. If the puree is too runny then adjust the quantity of the water. Remember the gravy must be thick and creamy and not water based.
- Now add paneer and mix it.
- Add garam masala, sugar and kasuri methi.
- Cook on a low flame for another 5 minutes.
- Serve hot with naan, roti or rice.
Ta da .. Palak Paneer Recipe ends here… Ready to eat !
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Tips & Tricks – Palak Paneer Recipe
- Blanching spinach helps to squeeze out excess water from the spinach – this will prevent this dish from being soggy.
- To prevent darkening of the spinach color, do not cover the cooking pan while palak paneer is getting cooked.
- For a vegan version of this, replace paneer with tofu and use cooking oil instead of ghee.
