VEGAN PALAK PANEER | incredible Indian recipe

Can't go to the spa but you can give yourself a spinach facial at home. It's just as good, I promise. It doesn't smell weird either. Hey guys, welcome back to my kitchen. Today I'm going to show you how to veganize one of my favorite Indian dishes, Palak Paneer. Palak Paneer is an Indian spinach curry typically made with cubes of mild soft cheese called paneer, sometimes with heavy cream as well. My spin on it is just as delicious and indulgent as the classic, but it's 100% vegan. It's actually quite healthy, so let's get started. We're going to start this dish by prepping the spinach curry, and there are two main ingredients in this. First, spinach and raw cashews. These have been soaked in boiling water for an hour, so I'm going to drain them. And the cashews are what's going to make this curry really creamy without using any dairy. And of course, this recipe calls for a lot of spinach, like Popeye levels of spinach. That's how you know it's good for you. And this is mature spinach, so it needs to be washed really thoroughly. There's like a lot of dirt in here. It's quite filthy. You want to make sure that you thoroughly rinse the spinach because there's a lot of sand hiding in those nooks and crannies. I've got some water heating up on the stove to blanch the spinach. In the meantime, I'm going to prep the tofu, which is our paneer substitute. And you don't need to press it like you would with a lot of recipes. We're just going to remove some of the excess water on the outside. Just give it a little dab. And what I love about this recipe is that it's so delicious, but it's actually very healthy, like deceptively so. Instead of cheese, we have protein-packed tofu. Instead of dairy, we have cashews. And of course, we have all of this spinach. So if you have picky kids at home, this is a great way to get them to eat their greens. And if you have a picky long-term partner named Max, I don't know who that could be, but if you have one of those, this is also a great way to get Max to eat his greens too. I've got the excess water out of the tofu, so now it's time to slice it into some cubes. And to mimic the texture of the paneer, which is soft but a little bit chewy, we're going to boil the tofu just for two minutes. It's very simple, but it does improve the texture of the tofu quite a bit. The water for the spinach is boiling. Before we add the spinach, though, I'm preparing an ice bath. Just ice and water, cold water. Because as soon as the spinach is done boiling, just two minutes, we're going to plunge it into this bowl of ice water. And that is going to help the spinach stop cooking. It's going to help retain that vibrant green color. So it's a really important step. All right, in goes the spinach. Ploppity plop. Alexa, set a timer for two minutes. Alexa, why can't you understand me? Every time I try to ask Alexa something, it's like she don't listen to me. She only listens to Max. I hate Alexa. All right, it's been two minutes. I'm using this spider claw to directly transfer the spinach from the pot into the ice bath. While the spinach is cooling down, I'm going to fill this bad boy up again to boil the tofu. If you have two saucepans, you can do this at the same time. Boil the spinach and the tofu at the same time. I didn't plan this out too well, though, so I'm just going to do it one after the other. The spinach is cooled, so now we're going to drain it and get out as much moisture as we can. Hey, it's so cold. Then I'm just going to take a dish towel, take our drained spinach, and just lay it out here. It doesn't need to be fully dried, but just let it hang out while you prep all the other ingredients. All right, we're going to set this wrinkly spinach aside for the time being. Go see if that tofu water is boiling. Nope. Water's not boiling yet, but that means we can get started on our aromatics for the curry. The first thing you want to do is dice up a medium yellow onion. I also have some garlic. So if you work efficiently and multitask like I am doing right now, like prepping things while things are boiling and waiting to boil, this is actually a very simple recipe and you can make it on a weeknight, 45 minutes from start to finish. Something we make on weeknights all the time. So as long as you can multitask, you should be good. For the garlic, I've got two cloves that I'm going to keep whole for the spinach sauce. It's going to get blended all together. And then I'm going to keep four cloves separate. I'm going to mince those. Those get cooked with the onion separately on the stove with some spices. For the rest of the aromatics, it's really quite simple. We've got two whole garlic cloves, some ginger, and a serrano pepper. Also a tomato. Recipe calls for two small tomatoes, but I've just got a kind of a chubby one. So I'm going to use one large chubby tomato. And you don't really need to finely dice these at all. Just give it a rough chop because the blender will take care of the work for you. All right, the aromatics are prepped. Water is boiling for the tofu. I'm going to boil it for two minutes. When I come back, we're going to make the spinach sauce. The spinach sauce is actually very simple. All you need to do is add to a blender some water. The raw cashews that were soaked and now have been drained. We're also going to add the blanched spinach along with the aromatics that we chopped. The garlic, ginger, serrano pepper, and chopped tomatoes. And finally about three quarters teaspoon of kosher salt. And we'll blend this all up until it's smooth, thick, and creamy. Get all those bits. All right, the spinach sauce is done. So we're going to head on over to the stove and put everything together. We've got some coconut oil heating up on the stove over medium heat. Once this pan is hot, we'll add one teaspoon of whole cumin seeds. And we'll cook those until they're fragrant and slightly darker in color, about one minute. Once these cumin seeds have been toasted, add the diced onion and cook for about four to five minutes or until it's translucent. Once these onions are softened, we'll go ahead and add the four cloves of minced garlic. Saute the garlic for one to two minutes until it's really aromatic and fragrant and a little bit golden. After the garlic is done cooking, we'll add the spices. A teaspoon of coriander, a quarter teaspoon of turmeric, three quarters teaspoon kosher salt, plenty of black pepper, and optionally you can add a bay leaf. Now stir the spices into the onions and garlic for 30 seconds. Be sure to stir constantly to prevent them from burning. And the spices will start to smell really flavorful. Reduce the heat to medium low and then pour in the spinach sauce. Heat the spinach sauce for about five minutes. If it seems to dry out, you can go ahead and add a few spoons of water as needed. Finally, we'll stir in two finishing spices, a teaspoon of garam masala, and a half tablespoon of fenugreek leaves or kasuri methi. This last one is optional. If you don't have fenugreek leaves, it's fine, but it does add a nice sharp flavor. Then we'll fold in the boiled tofu cubes and gently toss everything to combine. Make sure all the tofu cubes are well coated in the spinach curry. Finally, we'll cook this mixture for two to three minutes. Add a squeeze of lemon or lime juice and salt to taste. I love serving this palak paneer with some white basmati rice. If you don't have that, you could also do some sort of Indian flatbread like roti or paratha. Dollop, scoop, spoon some of this palak paneer on top. And this is totally optional, but if you have some coconut yogurt at home, just a little spoonful at the end is a nice balance. It adds a little bit of tanginess and coolingness. I really like it. That is good. That is one good palak paneer. First class. It's really good. I think you guys are gonna love this one. And if you're interested in more vegan Indian recipes, I've got a short little playlist for you right here.