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
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📕 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
- 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:
... rosewater bubbled from the fountains in the courtyard where, seated on a golden chair on a velvet-draped dais, Akbar watched his guests feasting on the best his accomplished cooks could provide: whole sheep roasted on spits over fires of applewood, ducks and partridges stuffed with dried fruits and nuts and simmered in copper pots of saffron-spiced butter sauce, and chicken marinated in yogurt and spices before being baked in the searing heat of the tandoor - the portable clay oven used by a Moghul army on the march and brought to Hindustan in Babur's time.
As an extra touch of opulence, he had ordered loose gemstones to be scattered round the edges of the mounds of zard birinj - rice mixed with butter, raisins, dried cherries, almonds, pistachios, ginger and cinnamon - that were to be served to accompany the rich meats.
He had even commanded that fragrant musk-melon and sweet-juiced grapes be packed in ice and sent down through the Khyber Pass from Kabul.
The fruits had arrived two days ago in excellent condition. ...
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
Dear reader, do you like to cook with paneer and have you ever prepared your own paneer form scratch?
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with Spices and Herbs
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📖 Recipe
Paneer Korma Recipe - Mughlai Shahi Paneer Korma Curry
Ingredients
- 6 Almonds
- 1 Teaspoon Poppy Seeds white variety
- 1 Onion
- 1 Tomato
- 1 ½ Tablespoon Oil
- ½ Teaspoon Turmeric Ground aka Curcuma
- ½ Teaspoon Red Chili Pepper Ground
- 1 Teaspoon Cumin Seeds Ground
- 1 Teaspoon Coriander Seeds Ground
- ¼ Teaspoon Cinnamon Ground
- 1 Green Cardamom Pod *see Notes
- 1 small Bay Leaf
- ¼ Teaspoon Black Pepper Ground
- pinch Salt
- 1 Tablespoon Ginger + Garlic
- 5 Tablespoons Yogurt
- 2 Tablespoons Table Cream
- ½ cup Water
- 7 ounces Paneer aka Indian Cottage Cheese
- Cilantro Fresh to garnish, aka fresh Coriander
Instructions
- Toast your Almonds and Poppy seeds for a minute in a hot pan on all sides until you get the fragrant, good smelling aroma. Let the toasted almonds and poppy seeds cool, then transfer to a small spice/chutney blender jar together with the onion and tomato cut into rough chunks. Blend to a fine paste and keep aside.
- Add the Oil to a pan and stir fry for a minute all the spices, including, Turmeric, Chili, Cumin, Coriander p., Cinnamon, Cardamom, Bay leaf and Black Pepper. Then quickly add in the almond onion mixed paste, which you prepared earlier, and the Ginger Garlic Paste. Mix and stir cook for one two minutes.
- Reduce the stove heat or even close it and add the yogurt and cream. Mix it all and return to very low heat. At that point keep the curry to cook for 2 minutes on low heat before adding the water. If the yogurt/curd is heated up too much, or the curd will curdle The curry has to simmer over a very low heat for about 20 minutes so that it gains on flavor. (When the curry cools it gets a bit thicker, the poppy seeds almond and ginger make it a bit thicker as well)
- Then add the paneer cubes and cook for another 10 minutes on alower stove heat option.
- Garnish with freshly chopped cilantro. Serve up hot. (I used cut culantro/Mexican long cilantro in the pictures).
Notes
- Try to get white poppy seeds instead of black poppy seeds. The flavors are different. You can't substitute with black poppy.
- Whole Cardamom spice slightly crushed or around ¼ Teaspoon Cardamom powder
- You can also use Cashews instead of Almonds.
