Punjabi & North Indian · Starter
Paneer Tikka
- Intermediate
- 35 min
- roughly 2 of 4 for cost
- Vegetarian
Leads with aromatics blooming from the first bite, richness that coats and comforts, settling low and earthy.
Ingredients
- 500 g fresh paneer, cut in 3 cm cubes
- 500 g full fat dahi, hung in muslin 4 hours to give about 250 g
- 20 g besan (gram flour)
- 20 g ginger and garlic, pounded together to a paste
- 15 ml mustard oil
- 4 g deghi mirch
- 2 g turmeric
- 3 g garam masala
- 2 g kasoori methi, crushed
- 2 g ajwain
- 8 g salt, plus 20 g for the soaking water
- 1 green capsicum and 1 onion, cut into petals
- 40 g butter, melted, for basting
- 3 g chaat masala and 1 lemon, to finish
Equipment
Grill
The skills inside
Roasting in a hot ovenGrilling over live coalsMarinating: acid, salt and time
The words inside
Allergen screen
Found: gluten · dairy · mustard
Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.
Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.
Method
- Soak the paneer 15 minutes in water held at 60C (140F) with the 20 g salt dissolved in it, then lift it out and pat dry: the cubes should now yield slightly under a finger. 15 min
- Dry roast the besan over a low flame for 3 minutes until it smells of toasted biscuit and loses its raw chalkiness, then whisk it into the hung curd with the ginger garlic, mustard oil, deghi mirch, turmeric, garam masala, kasoori methi, ajwain and salt. 3 min
- Fold the paneer and the capsicum and onion petals through the marinade, which should hold a soft peak and cloak the cubes without sliding off, and leave it 1 hour and no longer. 60 min
- Thread them on skewers with a petal between each cube and cook over hot coals, or under a grill at its highest setting, for 8 to 10 minutes, turning, until the marinade sets dry and the edges blacken in spots. 10 min
- Baste with the melted butter, dust with chaat masala and squeeze the lemon over while they are still hissing.
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the techniques it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
Roasting in a hot oven 56 recipes
- The oven was fully up to heat before anything went in, given time beyond the indicator light rather than judged by it.
- Every piece has air around it. Nothing touches its neighbour and nothing is packed to the edge of the tray, because crowded food steams itself in its own moisture and never browns.
- Colour is even across the whole tray, the tray having been turned at least once: no pale row at the back and no dark row at the front.
- It came out BEFORE the target temperature, not at it. Carryover keeps driving the inside up by several degrees after it leaves the oven, and that rise is part of the cooking rather than an error in it.
- The temperature was read at the coldest part rather than the easiest one to reach, and read again after the rest.
Where it goes wrong The tray was crowded, or the oven was not truly up to heat. The food releases steam faster than a cool box can carry it away, so it sits pale and slack, and the extra minutes spent chasing colour take the inside well past where it should have stopped.
Marinating: acid, salt and time 70 recipes
- Contact is total: every surface is wetted, and the pieces are not welded into a clump with dry faces where they pressed together.
- The stated time was kept and kept cold, read against a clock, because this is the one technique where longer is a different result rather than a safer one.
- It worked at the surface and no further: cut a piece and the marinade’s colour stops a few millimetres in. A protein gone opaque and chalky to the centre before any heat reached it has been cooked by the acid.
- The texture is still springy and whole, not mushy, mealy, or fraying at the surface when it is lifted.
- Where the next step browns it, the surface was patted dry first: a wet surface cannot brown, and the marinade’s sugars will scorch before the food colours.
Where it goes wrong It was left well beyond the stated time on the assumption that more is better, so acid and salt worked through the thin edges: those cook to cotton and read grainy while the thick centre tastes of nothing at all.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Alpine white (dry Riesling, Grüner)
- Also Right
- Champagne: bubbles scrub richness
- From the Taps
- Bière de garde
- Zero-Proof
- Sparkling apple
Melted cheese coats; acid and carbonation scrub: high-cut whites and Champagne keep the fondue from winning.
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