A traditional Indian meal known as saag paneer consists of sautéed spinach dotted with fried paneer cheese cubes. It’s a rich and satisfying vegetarian dish that has been thickened with cream or coconut milk.
| Prep Time: | 15 mins |
| Cook Time: | 45 mins |
| Total Time: | 1 hr |
| Servings: | 4 |
Ingredients
- 2 bunches spinach, roughly chopped
- 1 bunch fenugreek leaves, roughly chopped
- 3 tablespoons canola oil, divided
- ½ pound paneer, cubed
- 1 teaspoon cumin seeds
- 1 onion, thinly sliced
- 3 cloves garlic, minced
- 1 teaspoon grated fresh ginger
- 1 tomato, diced
- 2 teaspoons garam masala
- ½ teaspoon ground turmeric
- ½ teaspoon cayenne pepper
- ½ cup heavy whipping cream
- salt to taste
Instructions
- Bring a large saucepan of water to a boil; add spinach and fenugreek and cook until wilted, about 3 minutes. Drain well; transfer to a food processor and blend until finely chopped, about 5 pulses.
- Heat 1 tablespoon canola oil in a large skillet over medium heat; add paneer cubes and fry until browned on all sides, about 5 minutes. Transfer paneer onto a plate.
- Heat remaining 2 tablespoons canola oil in the same skillet over medium heat; add cumin seeds and fry until lightly toasted and aromatic, about 3 minutes. Add onion; cook and stir until softened, 4 to 5 minutes. Add garlic and ginger and stir to coat. Stir in tomato, garam masala, turmeric, and cayenne pepper; cook until tomato breaks down, stirring often, about 10 minutes.
- Stir in pureed spinach mixture, paneer cubes, and cream; add salt to taste. Reduce heat to low, cover, and simmer for 15 minutes, stirring occasionally.
- You can substitute coconut milk for the cream.
Nutrition Facts
| Calories | 299 kcal |
| Carbohydrate | 18 g |
| Cholesterol | 29 mg |
| Dietary Fiber | 5 g |
| Protein | 17 g |
| Saturated Fat | 6 g |
| Sodium | 480 mg |
| Sugars | 3 g |
| Fat | 20 g |
| Unsaturated Fat | 0 g |
Reviews
This is a great recipe for saag paneer and I have made it several times just as it is, but don’t shoot me, sometimes I’m in a hurry and no paneer. Since I have no problem with dairy, I just stir in a good amount of 4% large curd cottage cheese instead of the cream or coconut milk. Its quick and yummy.
Wowza! My East Indian hubby really enjoyed my Saag Paneer tonight! I made it for the first time using this as my base recipe and the ingredients I had, with the addition of “marinating” the cubed paneer first from another recipe online. I cubed the paneer in 2 cm cubes, (but could go smaller next time!) and poked each with a fork then mixed with 1/2 tsp. each of chilli powder, turmeric and fine sea salt. I fried the paneer in my large frying pan on medium-low heat until nicely browned on all sides ~5 mins and set aside. I used only spinach leaves (we had no fenugreek leaves), blanching a 454g-bag of Costco washed spinach in a large pot of boiling water for ~4 mins then drained and set aside. We had no cumin seeds so I fried the thinly sliced onion until soft then used jarred minced garlic and ginger in equivalent amounts to this recipe. I followed the remainder of this recipe, using 1/2 c. of 18% cream and 1 tsp. salt. Hubby didn’t even wait for the rice to be made and he ate his saag paneer with a slice of whole wheat bread! My daughter and I had it with Basmati rice, and boy was it good! A tad on the spicy side but delicious! I will definitely make this again with my changes as described.
Since we live in a rural area both the fenugreek and paneer were unavailable. For the fenugreek I used fresh mustard greens plus a tablespoon of fenugreek powder. For the paneer I substituted 1 block of extra-firm tofu which I cubed and tossed with 1/2 teaspoon cumim, 1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper, and 2 tablespoons cornstarch. The cubes were lightly sprayed with olive oil and baked at 350 until browned. As per other comments, I doubled all spices except for the cayenne. Also, due to health issues, the whipping cream was replaced with 2 percent plain greek yogurt. I know that my changes compromised the authenticity of this recipe, but it turned out very tasty. I served it with quinoa.
Super delicious, read the comments and made the following changes: – Doubled all the spices, garlic, ginger, and onions and added cumin & coriander – Used full fat coconut milk – Skipped cooking greens separately and added the greens to the pan after throwing in the tomatoes/spices; let that cook for 5ish minutes and then blended all of that and the coconut milk in a food processor until creamy – Added lime juice and a tiny bit (tsp) of sugar at the end
I’m an avid Indian food consumer and am now diving into cooking my favorite dishes. This saag paneer recipe is amazing, better than my favorite Indian restaurant. Highly recommend this recipe. Only thing I changed was the cayenne pepper, I have a toddler so I cut that ingredient in half.
I was also confused about the two bunches of spinach and one bunch of Fenugreek until i went to the local Indian grocery store. There i found that the spinach is sold in bunches. Two bunches came to a little more than 1/2 pound, however one bunch of Fenugreek was 1 pound. I ended up use 1/2 pound of spinach and and a quarter pound of fenugreek leaves. The fenugreek leaves didn’t seem to add any additional flavor, so i’m not sure why its part of the recipe. I also added 1 tsp of ground coriander and and 1 tsp of ground cumin and reduced the garam masala to one teaspoon. This may have been why some people found the recipe bland.
wonderful
Delicious!
Tasty overall. Too spicy for us, so I’ll cut down the Cayenne next time. Paneer seemed kind of tough. Not sure if I overbrowned it. Thx for recipe!
So satisfyingly yummy! I had a deep craving for fenugreek, so I prepared this dish with what I had on hand. I didn’t add the tomato since my partner is sensitive. But I would love to try it someday 🙂 Prepared basmati rice, steamed with ghee and Himalayan salt. Excellent! Lokah Samastah Sukhino Bhavantu
I liked it, but it won’t be on rotation at our place. It was definitely hearty and a great way to get in some greens but it seemed to be missing something.
This was absolutely delicious. It was my first experience with fresh fenugreek, and I’m pleasantly surprised. For those also new to it, put aside a lot of extra time for removing the leaves from the stems and washing extremely well (lots of gritty dirt to remove). We enjoyed this dairy-free with tofu instead of the paneer and coconut milk instead of the cream. I will definitely make again!
Good overall recipe. I also thought it needed to be a little heavier on the spices and ginger (I usually do for most Indian cuisine recipes), but Saag paneer is generally pretty mild as it is. It wasn’t quite restaurant quality, felt like something was missing. Possibly because I didn’t have heavy cream on hand and used half & half instead. I otherwise stayed true to the recipe. Next time I will try the dish with coconut milk. The Paneer cheese was more chewy as others have said, but I’m sure as they sit in the dish they will soak up water and become softer with a little time. On a side note, this was my first time cooking with fenugreek leaves (called Menthi leaves at my local ethnic food mart). The taste of the leaves was almost identical to that of spinach, so if you don’t have this ingredient on hand, you’re probably not missing much in the way of flavor.
This is a truly excellent recipe. I enjoyed it a lot
I LOVE Indian food and this recipe was sensational. The dish tasted almost as good as my favorite local Indian restaurant. I made the recipe exactly as it was written. This will be on my list of regulars!!!
The recipe was easy to follow but I couldn’t find fenugreek leaves. I would double the spices because it was very bland.
Like many others, I had trouble finding a bunch of fenugreek. The internet said celery leaves would be a good sub, so I used a handful of celery leaves and a pinch of dried fenugreek (kasoori methi). I also used the coconut milk instead of cream but doubled it. Really good.
After loosing a recipe from the newspaper I decided to try and make the saag anyway. I used this recipe as a base for amounts and cooking then used what was on hand, box of baby spinach, paneer, gram masala, cumin power, ginger power, fennel seeds, dried parsley, fresh garlic & onion, tabasco sauce, paprika, garlic power, cream, salt & black pepper. I also had left over lamb shank from Easter to put on the table as garnish. It turned out very nice. We are not a fan of the paneer however, I might try the Mexican style cooking cheese or tofu next time. Also read kale or any bitter greens will work, if you want a change for the spinach.
This is a great recipe! The end result was definitely restaurant quality, and I will make it again (and again, and again!). I did read through some comments though and tweaked it a bit based on those. My changes are as follows: 1. frozen spinach instead of fresh because it’s what I had 2. A full can of coconut milk in lieu of the cream 3. Didn’t have fresh fenugreek, so I added a 1/2 teaspoon of ground fenugreek seed in at the end. 4. Doubled onions, garlic, ginger, cumin, and turmeric, cooked for a bit longer, and pulsed in the food processor before adding to the spinach. 5. added sugar and lime juice to taste at the end to balance out any bitterness. It definitely needed a little hit of acidity. But don’t go overboard! We ate it with garlic naan and it was AMAZING.
I’ve made this one before and like it better that time. The difference was that I didn’t have the fenugreek last time so I made do with a much smaller amount of ground fenugreek seed. This time, I had the right amount and it seemed too much. Still, a great hit.
This dish turned out delicious and was a hit with my family. I was not able to find paneer so I used panela which is somewhat similar in taste even though does not retain shape as good as paneer. I also reduced the amount of cayenne to make the dish milder.