Better Than the Freezer Aisle: Copycat Amy's Mattar Paneer - Ready to Eat Dinner
Better Than the Freezer Aisle: Copycat Amy's Mattar Paneer - Ready to Eat Dinner
Mattar Paneer is a popular vegetarian Indian dish made with green peas and paneer, and unripened fresh cheese. However, unlike it's freezer aisle counterparts, this Better Than The Freezer Aisle option ensure that eat bite is bursting with the flavors of a sauce with a slight kick, crisp peas and mouth watering paneer.
Ingredients
- 4 individual halve Onion
- 4 teaspoons mince Garlic, Cloves
- 2 teaspoons peel and mince Ginger, Fresh
- 2 ounces drain Mild Green Chiles, Diced, Canned
- 4 tablespoons Olive Oil
- 3 medium Tomato
- 1 teaspoon Turmeric
- 2 teaspoons Garam Masala
- ¼ teaspoons Chili Powder
- 1 teaspoon Salt
- ½ cups Water
- 15 ounces Garbanzo Beans (Chick Peas), Canned
- 16 ounces Peas, Frozen
- 2 ⅓ cups dice Paneer
- 2 cups cook Basmati Rice
Containers
Supplies
Cooking Instructions
Freeze For Later Cooking Day Directions
These directions help you cook or prepare this meal PRIOR to being frozen for serving later (see Serving Day Directions when you are ready to prepare it to eat).
Why would I want to freeze this?
- In a food processor, blend the onions, garlic, ginger and green chiles.
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Make From Frozen Serving Day Directions
These directions help you cook or reheat this meal AFTER it's been frozen for when you are ready to eat it.
- Thaw: In fridge
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Make It Now Cooking Directions
These directions are for cooking this recipe to serve immediately and NOT to freeze for later.
- In a food processor, blend the onions, garlic, ginger and green chiles.
- In a skillet, heat olive oil over medium heat. Add the blended ingredients.
- Add tomatoes to food processor and blend.
- Add tomatoes to the skillet and continue to cook for 15 minutes.
- Add turmeric, garam masala, chili powder, salt, water, chickpeas and peas. Cover and cook for 5 minutes.
- Add paneer cubes and cook uncovered for 10 minutes.
- Serve with cooked basmati rice.
Nutrition Facts
- Servings Per Recipe
- 4 Servings
- Serving Size
- about 2 cups Amount Per Serving
- Calories
- 915
- Total Fat
- 46g
- Saturated Fat
- 21g
- Trans Fat
- 0g
- Cholesterol
- 113mg
- Sodium
- 954mg
- Total Carbohydrates
- 84g
- Fiber
- 12g
- Sugar
- 12g
- Protein
- 43g
- WW Freestyle
- 24
18 Comments
Join the discussionI was thrilled when I found this recipe! Not only is mattar paneer my favorite Indian dish, the Amy’s version of it is my favorite frozen entree ever. And as someone who hates packing lunch – that is saying something. I concur that this version is indeed better than the one in the freezer aisle!
However, tracking down the paneer was not an easy task. I live in an area with many specialty grocery stores as well as Southeast Asian markets. And yet I still had difficulty locating a store that sold paneer. Had to call three different ones until I found a Whole Foods across town that carried it. And like most items at Whole Foods – it was totally overpriced. But worth it in the end since nothing can beat the richness and texture of that cheese.
So unless you have easy access to paneer, I would definitely recommend either substituting the paneer or making it yourself. I learned that it can be made easily (and fairly quickly) with just a pot, whole milk, a lemon, a strainer, and a cheesecloth. I will definitely try that next time since tracking down the paneer was such a hassle.
Tofu and farmer cheese are oft-recommended substitutes for paneer. However, I would not recommend the latter for this recipe. I made a batch with farmer cheese and while it tasted great, the cheese fell apart. You want it to stay in blocks since the texture of the cheese is what makes this dish so satisfying and delicious.
Easy to make your own paneer. Bring milk to boil, add lemon juice til the whey turns a little green, may have to reboil, careful it boils over easily makes big mess on stove, pour onto cloth lined colander keeping colander over bowl. You can save whey for soup,etc. Cloth should be like cheese cloth or thin cotton. Hang for a while til as dry as you want. Then cut in pieces. I was also happy to find this recipe. You can use whole milk or 2%.
You can use extra firm tofu instead of paneer
Thank you for posting this! I too love the Amy’s version of this and was so glad to have stumbled across your recipe! Super excited to make it.
I used panela which was easily found in my small hometown’s walmart, over by the mexican cheeses.
it held up like paneer and tasted great in this recipe. I was thrilled to find it because this is my fav Amy’s frozen meal but paying 4 bucks for that small amount of food seems ridiculous. I will make this on weekly repeat!
Glad that it was a hit, Sarah!
Amy’s version also has FENNEL seeds I believe? Not sure what I did wrong but turmeric was too strong.
I could eat the Amy’s Indian MP every day hope I can tweak this closer. Any other suggestions?
Hi! This is our closest version that we were able to test and feel confident in making public. It sounds like you are on the right track for the changes that you’d like to see – decreasing the turmeric – maybe decrease it to 1/4 teaspoon and add in increments until you feel it is right. As to the fennel – it doesn’t look like it does from the nutrition information but absolutely feel free to add it if that is what you feel is missing! Sorry we couldn’t be of more help — report back and let us know how it goes!!
There are fennel seeds in the rice. Something I look forward to. It’s not uncommon for Indian restaurants to spice their rice it seems.
Per your suggestions I added fennel seeds and reduced the tumeric (to half). About a half tsp of seeds while cooking the onion/ tomato purée which really worked.
I also added more salt (per my tatste) and a half tsp of ground cumen near the end as it needed a little something more.
My wife loved it and said it tasted like it came from a restaurant.
Thanks for sharing these great adaptions! We’re glad to hear that your wife loved it!
I think it’s probably cumin seeds, not fennel.
I couldnt work out what was meant by “4 individual halve onion”. Should that be “4 individual onions: halved” or “4 halves of onion” as in 2 onions cut in half? Makes a big difference 🙂 I went for 3…just in case.
Hi Rachel. We understand that the way our system breaks down ingredients might be confusing. The unit “individual” is how you purchase the onion and the prep that you are doing is to halve the onion. Once our members add this to their meal plan the instructions on the prep sheet would show them the proper amount of onions needed (4) and then tell them to cut them in halve- ending up with 8 halves. I hope this clarifies any confusion. 🙂
That confused me, too. Why not just say 4 onions cut in half?
Our software is designed for maximum efficiency for freezer cooking. So it may not make sense in this stand alone recipe when your read it that way- but when you have all of your resources (and your grocery list tells you to purchase a certain amount of whole onions and your prep sheet tells you to cut a certain amount of onions in half) it makes a whole lot more sense. It’s just the way we designed this to make the freezer cooking process much simpler – even though this one recipe by itself may seem more difficult to understand when you only have one piece of the puzzle.
This recipe isn’t very good. The onions, garlic and tomatoes remain raw tasting. Would probably be better to pan fry first and blend after.
I tried this recipe, and while it’s kind of ok, it’s definitely not as good as Amy’s. It’s missing something, possibly cumin.