Paneer Korma Curry Recipe | Masalaherb.com (2024)

Earlier in the day, I cooked this paneer korma recipe when I realized that I hadn't yet posted this aromatic Indian cottage cheese curry.

Luckily, I was a bit early in preparing lunch, so I kept an extra hour for the whole picture making process so that you could also benefit from this one-pot easy and quick Paneer Korma.

📕 What is Paneer Korma Curry?

Paneer Korma is a curry from Northern India. A thick spiced gravy cooks with soft Indian cottage cheese, which is better known as Paneer.

Korma is also spelled Kurma in Indian cuisine, and therefore you will find this dish also under Paneer kurma on menu cards.

The Indian dish contains a mild quantity of heat, and it is rather aromatically enhanced than hot spiced.

Paneer Korma is sometimes also called Shahi Paneer in India and abroad. Shahi means royal and Paneer is, well, the cottage cheese.

It indicated that it is one of the dishes that may have survived past the Mughal/Mogul rule in India.

The Mughal emperors originally came from Central Asia and ruled India for about 240 years. They were Muslims and were heavily influenced by Persian culture. Their food reflected just that!

Korma usually tends to be a curry prepared with yogurt as a base. Yet, somewhat the lines have been blurred and rules about Mogul heritage meals are not necessarily set in stone in India.

Korma meals can be now made with coconut milk, and they can be prepared with almonds as a base.

My particular Paneer Korma Curry is prepared with blended almonds, tomato, onion, and a set of north Indian spices.

🔪 How to make it?

This is a quick overview that will help you to get an idea on how to make this korma curry from scratch at home.

Step 1

Dry fry your poppy seeds and almonds to help release the aroma in a pan.

Place cooled whole spices and almonds into a food processor or blender jar, together with the tomato and onion.

Blend to a smooth paste.

Step 2

Heat up a deeper skillet or pan with two handles (called a kadai in India) with oil and stir cook your powdered spices over a slow fire for a minute.

Stir in the blended paste from earlier with ginger garlic paste.

Step 3

Take from the heat and stir in the yogurt and cream. Take back to a lower heat setting and combine the korma paste.

Cook for 1–2 minutes over a lower heat setting. Stir in water. Mix up.

Step 4

Simmer covered over a low heat for 20 minutes.

Stir in paneer cottage cheese cubes and simmer for another 10 minutes.

Serve up hot.

💡 Tips

• Paneer can be substituted with various suitable ingredients.
• Don't skip dry frying the white poppy seeds and almonds. It releases the aroma!
• If you can't get white poppy seeds, skip adding them. You can't substitute them with black poppy because they taste very differently. Poppy seeds mainly help in binding the curry and they add a distinctive taste. You can purchase white poppy seeds at walmart or target or online.
• Almonds can be substituted with cashew nuts too
• The spices are briefly fried in the oil to bring out the taste.
• Simmer over a very low-heat setting to avoid curdling of the yogurt.
• If your curry has curdled a bit, that's ok. It's still good, it's just that the curry looks better smooth.
• You can enhance this curry and make it your own by adding cooked vegetables such as cauliflower, carrots, and broccoli.
• To make it more spicy hot add a few fresh green chilies during the simmering process or increase the quantity of red chili powder.
• To reduce the heat, use mild Kashmiri chili powder or even paprika. Don't just skip it because it adds the orange color. If you can't take heat, use sweet paprika.

🍴 Serving Ideas

This Indian cottage cheese kurma curry can be served with plain rice or flavored rice such as cilantro lime rice, simple lemon rice, jeera rice (cumin), pulao rice or cloves flavored rice.

I prefer to serve up my korma with Indian flat bread. You can choose between:

• ghee chapati
• roti (cooked on the stove) or tandoori roti (cooked in a tandoori clay oven)
• plain paratha or kerala paratha
• plain naan bread or naan with butter, garlic or cheese

🕛 Historical Significance of Paneer Korma

In recent times I have been getting lost again in the history of the Mughal with the Empire of the Mogul's 3rd book Ruler of the World.

The first book is about emperor Babur's fate in India, the second tells the story of Humayun's struggle, the third recounts Akbar's live, the 4th turns around Jahangir's tale and the 5th is about Shah Jahan (Taj mahal) and his son Aurangzeb.

The books transport you back to 16th century India, when the mogul ruled the lands from beyond Kabul, Bombay to Calcutta.

The moguls were descendants of Genghis Khan and Timurid and ruled their lands mostly wisely but also with a firm hand.

I completely lose myself in the Empire of the Mughal book series each time again and again, they absorb my whole attention and I always learn something along the way.

The story is full of details, and you have the impression that you are there or that these long gone times are about to manifest in front of you.

Although it's a fictional historical book, the authors made sure to keep it true to the historical facts, which makes the writing all the more precious.

My favorite parts in the books are the extensive description of the mogul feasts.

You get the idea how certain dishes came to be, that's when you take a peek into the soul of the ones who helped to define the food in this country.

You also learn that some food dishes might not have changed much after all.

A passage from the Empire of the Moghul, ruler of the worlds writes and I may quote:

I wish I could learn more about the food habits of the ones who lived eons ago.

How did these portable tandoor ovens look like, and why is it that we don't get to buy portable clay tandoor ovens nowadays?

I also ask myself if the moghuls had discovered paneer for themselves because paneer korma is a mughlai shahi paneer dish.

Mughlai stands for mogul and shahi means royal.

The name indicated that one of the mughal emperors might have turned this firm cottage cheese back then into an empire-wide food trend.

I wonder how the cooks would have prepared it, maybe somehow close to my recipe?

One thing I know for sure, my easy, and quick paneer korma recipe is indeed a royal dish in my house.

If you have a hang for North Indian Food, then this is a dish for you.

The mild curry will enthrall your senses, and perhaps you will be transported through time and space, to a period when Akbar (the great) ruled this country known as India today.

🥘 More similar Curries

• Vegetable Korma
• Chicken Korma
• Matar Paneer

Dear reader, do you like to cook with paneer and have you ever prepared your own paneer form scratch?

📖 Recipe