Make restaurant-quality Indian peas and paneer or Matar Paneer in your Instant Pot or pressure cooker. This is a classic Indian vegetarian recipe you can make at home in minutes. This Punjabi Style Matar Paneer tastes like dhaba Matar paneer but is ready in about 30 minutes in your Instant Pot or pressure cooker.
How do you make Instant Pot Matar Paneer?
Traditionally Matar Paneer is made by sautéing the onion/tomato mixture for what feels like forever. But I'm lazy/efficient so I let the pressure cooker do all the work for me. It seems odd to just throw veggies in there and walk away--but welcome to cooking Urvashi style.
For this recipe, you can either buy the paneer ready-made at Indian grocery stores where it is typically in the frozen section, or you can make it yourself using this very easy pressure cooker paneer recipe. At the grocery store, they sell the paneer either plain or fried.
Honestly, they both taste good and I often can't tell the difference once it has been incorporated into this Matar Paneer recipe, so I suggest you get either of them--or do what I do, which is to get one of each type. Just in case.Just in case what--that I don't know. But I always get one each!
TIPS AND TRICKS FOR MAKING INSTANT POT INDIAN MATAR PANEER PEAS AND PANEER RECIPE
You will notice that I add water to this recipe in two stages and there are a few reasons I do it that way.
- You want the vegetables to cook in minimal water to facilitate as much of a Maillard reaction as possible.
- I often use this technique of water in two stages even when I'm making soups. The more water you have, the longer the pressure cooker takes to come to pressure. By using only the water needed to cook, and adding the rest later, I reduce my overall cooking time. So clearly we have #ruthlessefficiency coming into play here.
- Vegetables & meat vary a lot with respect to how much water they contain. I find you get much better results by adding water later to control the final consistency. This yields much better results than sautéing after something is cooked to reduce water, as you tend to overcook your ingredients that way.
- Although I have provided nutritional information for this Matar Paneer recipe, I don't entirely trust it as it will depend a lot on the type of paneer you use. Please calculate macros based on your final ingredients.
- This recipe was made in an Instant Pot mini and a 6-quart duo. If you use an 8-quart, either double the recipe or add an extra 1/4 cup water to the pressure cooking cycle.
- If you want to add other vegetables, they need to either be veggies that will cook on sauté (such as corn), vegetables that need 5 minutes of pressure cooking time, or vegetables you cook PIP in five minutes (such as cauliflower florets).
Other recipes you'd like
If you like the idea of using your Instant Pot to make Indian dishes, you will want to try these favorites below too. Although I do have 74 Indian pressure cooker recipes on my site, which you can see HERE.
- Instant Pot Butter Chicken (my most popular recipe) or get the vegetarian version HERE
- Tomato Coconut Soup
- Pressure Cooker Rice & Dal (made at the same time!)
? Did you make this recipe? Don't forget to give it a star rating below! Just click on the stars in the recipe card to rate.
Ingredients
For Pressure Cooking
- 2 tablespoons (2 tablespoons) Oil
- 1.5 cups (240 g) Onion, finely chopped
- 1 tbsp (1 tbsp) Minced Ginger
- 1 tbsp (1 tbsp) Minced Garlic
- 1 cup (149 g) diced tomatoes
- 1/4 cup (62.5 g) Water
- 1 teaspoon (1 teaspoon) Turmeric
- 1 teaspoon (1 teaspoon) Garam Masala
- 1 teaspoon (1 teaspoon) Cayenne Pepper
- 1/2 -1 teaspoon Kosher Salt
For Finishing
- 1/2 cup (125 g) Water
- 12 oz (340.2 g) Frozen Peas
- 1 cup (225 g) paneer, chopped, or firm tofu if dairy-free
- 1/4 cup (59.5 g) Heavy Whipping Cream, Or full-fat coconut milk
- 1/4 cup (4 g) Cilantro, or parsley, chopped
Instructions
- For this recipe, the most important thing is to mince the onions and tomatoes relatively finely. You don't want to purée them, but you don't want large chunks. I used my Kuhn Rikon Pull chopper to get small, even pieces.
- Add all the ingredients listed under Pressure cooking to the inner liner of your Instant Pot and mix well.
- Cook at high pressure for 5 minutes, and allow it to rest undisturbed for 5 minutes. Then release all remaining pressure.
- Turn your pot on Sauté. Add remaining 1/2 cup of water now. (Please read the post to understand why the two stage water additions).
- Add the remaining ingredients and allow them to heat through, stirring occasionally, for about 5-8 minutes.
- Although I have provided nutritional information, I don't entirely trust it as it will depend a lot on the type of paneer you use. Please calculate macros based on your final ingredients.
- This recipe was made in a Mini and a 6-quart duo. If you use an 8-quart, either double the recipe or add an extra 1/4 cup water to the pressure cooking cycle.
- If you want to add other vegetables, they need to either be veggies that will cook on Sauté (such as corn), vegetables that need 5 minutes of pressure cooking time, or vegetables you cook PIP in five minutes (such as cauliflower florets)
Leslie
This recipe is so good, so easy, and pretty healthy!
Marjorie Jensen
Wonderful! First Indian recipe that my husband praised the spicing. Nice layering
of flavors AND it’s Instant Pot!!!!!
Tiz
What if I wanted to make this Aloo Matar? Would I just add my potatoes to this recipe and pressure cook for 5 mins?
Antigone Chapogas
I wanted to mention that the print version of this recipe doesn't include salt. I followed it as written (for once) and found it too bland. I'm about to make it again and will add the salt and double the garam masala, and probably the garlic.
Raj S
Overall, very good recipe. I pan fried paneer before adding and I also added kasuri methi.
Cindy Allen
It was delicious, even though I used tofu instead of paneer. It was economical, satisfying, fast and even though I used an entire can of reduced fat coconut milk, it only had 6 smart points (WW). Next time I may use an immersion blender on the onions & tomatoes and I upped the spices a bit for me, but I’ll definitely make this again soon!
Penny
This was very very good. I doubled the recipe and used the mix of frozen peas and carrots, because that’s what I had on hand. I did add one Serrano pepper with the onions and an extra tsp of garam masala (Urvashi’s recipe) at the end because I felt that the added water after pressure cooking diluted the flavors a bit. Otherwise, it was a great curry - as good as (if not better) what I’ve had in restaurants. Will be making this again soon!
Roberta
This is lovely!
sa
1. do not put in the 2nd part of water
2. i sauteed the onions first, plus ginger and garlic, and then added the rest and put it on pressure for 5 minutes
3. not sure i love the coocnut milk....
4. agree with adding the chilis!
5. so fun and easy.
Wendy
Delicious! It's a favorite in our house. My kids love it!