Paneer Butter Masala
The difference between grainy homemade makhani and silky restaurant gravy is one sieve and a gentler hand with...
Why this gravy is smooth and most are not
Paneer butter masala lives or dies on texture. The gravy is a tomato-and-cashew puree, and if you skip sieving it after blending you get a faintly grainy sauce no amount of cream will rescue. Restaurants sieve. That is most of the secret.
Bloom the chilli, then build the sauce
Kashmiri red chilli is here for colour, not heat. Add it to warm butter off the heat — it releases its colour into the fat without scorching, which is what gives the finished dish its deep orange rather than a dull brown.
Butter goes in last, a cube at a time
The sauce needs to emulsify. Adding cold butter gradually to a simmering gravy lets the fat suspend evenly instead of splitting into an oily layer. Then the paneer only warms through — boiling paneer is what makes it squeak and turn rubbery.
Crush the kasuri methi between your palms as it goes in, off the heat. It is a finishing aromatic; cook it long and it turns bitter.
Cook this with the interactive recipe book
Scale the servings, tick off ingredients as you go, and run per-step timers in a hands-free Cook Mode built for a phone on the counter.
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