Delicious Kadai paneer, prepared in restaurant style at home with soft paneer and homemade kadai masala. Learn how to make with stepwise pictures.

Kadai paneer is one of the popular North Indian side dishes for Indian bread items like roti, chapati, paratha, naan and kulcha. As you may know, the highlight of this kadai style gravies is from the ‘special kadai masala’ we prepare beforehand.

You can find this kadai masala ready-made in stores too. But I strongly recommend making this masala in the home for the fresh aroma. Moreover, the kadai masala preparation takes just less than 10minutes hence you can do it while making the gravy.

In addition to that, use homemade or fresh store-bought paneer for better taste. And regarding the fresh cream, I always use homemade fresh milk cream for any North Indian gravy. Further, fresh cream is optional for the buttery consistency and you can omit it if you wish.

How to make Restaurant-style Kadai paneer gravy

For other paneer recipes:

Paneer butter masala

Paneer fried rice

Palak paneer

Paneer tikka

Shahi paneer

Paneer jalfrezi

Watch the video uploaded in the recipe card and please subscribe to my youtube channel 🙂

Kadai Paneer | Restaurant style Kadai paneer gravy

Sangskitchen

Delicious Kadai paneer, prepared in restaurant style at home with soft paneer and homemade kadai masala.

5 from 1 vote

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Prep Time 20 minutes mins

Cook Time 20 minutes mins

Total Time 40 minutes mins

Course dinner, Side Dish

Cuisine Indian

Servings 4

Calories 420 kcal

Ingredients

  

1x2x3x

Ingredients:

• 200 g paneer cubes
• ½ cup onion cubes
• ½ cup capsicum cubes

To dry roast& powder(Kadai masala):

• 1 tbsp. coriander seeds
• 4 red chillies (as per taste)
• ½ tsp pepper corns
• ½ tsp cumin seeds
• 1 cinnamon
• 3 cloves
• 1 mace
• 1 cardamom
• 1 black cardamom

For gravy:

• 3 tbsp. oil
• 1 big onion
• 1 tsp ginger garlic paste
• 2 tomatoes
• 6 cashews (soaked for 15mins)
• ½ tsp Kashmiri chilli powder
• 2 cups water
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 tbsp. fresh cream (optional)
• 1 tsp kasuri methi

Instructions

 

Preparation:

• Soak cashews in warm water for 15 minutes.
• Grind chopped tomatoes with soaked cashews into a smooth paste and keep aside.
• Cut paneer into equal sized cubes.
• Chop onion and capsicum into cubes. Keep ready.
• Make ginger garlic paste if you don't have it readily available. Crush or paste 6 garlic pods and an inch of a ginger piece.

How to make kadai masala powder:

• Heat a pan, dry roast all whole spices together. Cinnamon, cloves, cardamom, black cardamom, mace, peppercorns, cumin seeds and red chillies.
• Dry roast in medium heat for few minutes until a nice aroma arises.
• Let this mixture cool down completely and grind into a coarse powder. Our kadai masala is ready.
• Store the excess powder in an airtight jar and use for dishes like Kadai chicken, Kadai vegetable and Kadai mushroom.
• You can make a fine powder also if you prefer that way.
• Click here to see how to make a homemade fresh cream.

Recipe to make kadai paneer masala:

• Heat some oil in a pan, first fry the paneer cubes for 3-5 minutes in low flame. But make sure the oil is hot before adding paneer. Because the paneer will stick to the pan if the oil is not hot.
• Do light fry on both the sides, collect in a separate plate and keep aside.
• To the same pan with leftover oil, add onion and capsicum cube slices. Also, saute them in hot oil for just 2 minutes.
• Collect in a separate cup and keep aside.
• Now coming to the main recipe, heat extra tbsp of oil in the same pan, add finely chopped onions and saute well.
• When the onions turn to the translucent state, add ginger garlic paste and saute well for few minutes to remove the raw flavor.
• Now add the ground tomato and cashew paste and saute well.
• Saute continuously for five minutes in medium flame as cashews may thicken and stick to the bottom while cooking.
• Pour a cup of water and mix to get the proper consistency.
• Add some Kashmiri chilli powder to get a nice color. This is an optional step.
• Adjust water quantity.
• Put the fried paneer cubes into the masala and add required salt for the gravy.
• Cook for five minutes in low heat and add sauteed capsicum, onion cubes.
• Now add the ground aromatic kadai masala powder lavishly.
• Let the gravy cook for two minutes.
• Finally, add fresh cream and crushed Kasuri Methi(fenugreek) leaves.
• Mix well and switch off in two minutes.
• Serve with hot Phulkas or rotis.

Video

Notes

Tips/Notes: 1) First of all, the preparation of fresh cream is very easy and click here (Homemade fresh cream) to check out how. Also, you can just skip using the cream as we are already using cashews to get the creamy texture. 2) Also, frying paneer cubes is according to your preference. Instead of frying, you can directly cook the paneer cubes in the Gravy for five minutes. 3) Most importantly, the capsicum and onion cubes which we saute in oil give the restaurant feel at home. Hence do not skip this step.

Nutrition

Calories: 420kcal

Keyword Chapathi side dish, How to make restaurant style kadai paneer at home, Kadai Paneer, North indian gravies, Paneer recipes, Restaurant style Kadai paneer gravy

Tried this recipe?Let us know how it was!

Preparation:

• Soak cashews in warm water for 15 minutes.
• Grind chopped tomatoes with soaked cashews into a smooth paste and keep aside.

• Cut paneer into equal-sized cubes.
• Chop onion and capsicum into cubes. Keep ready.
• Make ginger garlic paste if you don’t have it readily available. Crush or paste 6 garlic pods and an inch of a ginger piece.

How to make kadai masala powder:

• Heat a pan, dry roast all whole spices together. Cinnamon, cloves, cardamom, black cardamom, mace, peppercorns, cumin seeds, and red chillies.
• Dry roast in medium heat for few minutes until a nice aroma arises.
• Let this mixture cool down completely and grind into a coarse powder. Our kadai masala is ready.

• Store the excess powder in an airtight jar and use it for dishes like Kadai chicken, Kadai vegetable and Kadai mushroom.
• You can make a fine powder also if you prefer that way.
• Click here to see how to make a homemade fresh cream in the post of Paneer lababdar tips section.

Recipe to make kadai paneer masala:

• Heat some oil in a pan, first fry the paneer cubes for 3-5 minutes on low flame. But make sure the oil is hot before adding paneer. Because the paneer will stick to the pan if the oil is not hot.
• Do light fry on both sides, collect in a separate plate and keep aside.

• To the same pan with leftover oil, add onion and capsicum cube slices. Also, saute them in hot oil for just 2 minutes.
• Collect in a separate cup and keep aside.

• Now coming to the main recipe, heat extra tbsp of oil in the same pan, add finely chopped onions and saute well.

• When the onions turn to the translucent state, add ginger garlic paste and saute well for few minutes to remove the raw flavor.

• Now add the ground tomato and cashew paste and saute well.

• Saute continuously for five minutes in medium flame as cashews may thicken and stick to the bottom while cooking.
• Pour a cup of water and mix to get the proper consistency.

• Add some Kashmiri chilli powder to get a nice color. This is an optional step.

• Adjust water quantity. Put the fried paneer cubes into the masala and add the required salt for the gravy.

• Now add the ground aromatic kadai masala powder lavishly.

• Cook for five minutes in low heat and add sauteed capsicum, onion cubes.

• Let the gravy cook for two minutes.
• Finally, add fresh cream and crushed Kasuri Methi(fenugreek) leaves.

• Mix well and switch off in two minutes. Serve with hot Phulkas or rotis.

Tips/Notes:

1) First of all, the preparation of fresh cream is very easy and click here (Homemade fresh cream) to check out how. Also, you can just skip using the cream as we are already using cashews to get the creamy texture.

2) Also, frying paneer cubes is according to your preference. Instead of frying, you can directly cook the paneer cubes in the gravy for five minutes.

3) Most importantly, the capsicum and onion cubes that we saute in oil give the restaurant feel at home. Hence do not skip this step.

For a complete list of Side dish/ Veg gravies:

Veg gravies/curries