Spice up your meal with this delicious and easy-to-make chili paneer recipe! Chili paneer is a popular Indo-Chinese dish made by tossing crispy-fried Paneer (indian Cottage Cheese) or shallow fried Paneer in a spicy and tangy sauce.

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Chilli Paneer is one of the most popular recipes in Indo-Chinese cuisine. It is simply flour or batter coated fried paneer cubes tossed in a spicy, salty, tangy and sweet sauce made with green bell peppers, garlic, ginger, green chillies, soy sauce and more seasonings. There are three primary ways of making it, including dry, semi dry or gravy versions. In this post I am sharing the semi-dry (restaurant style) version alongside step-by-step photos and video.

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How to Make Resaturant Style Chilli Paneer

If you follow these tips, you will end up with restaurant style chilli paneer – without using any MSG.

Prep everything ahead of time: Get ready the chopped veggies like colored pepper and onions. Prepare the sauce and keep it aside. Get everything before you start making the recipe. You can fry the paneer (if you don’t like fry paneer you can airfry or shallow fry the paneer), set it aside and then do all the prep work before you start working on the gravy.

Since we cook everything on high heat, it all comes together quickly and there’s hardly anytime to chop things in between.

Cook on high heat: when cooking the veggies, the wok should constantly be oh high heat. You want all veggies to remain crunchy. Lower the flame once you have added the sauce.

Use quality ingredients: I always believe that using quality ingredients makes so much difference to the final outcome of the dish.

I have used some good qualities sauces and one of my secret ingredients too.

Can I make it Vegan?

Yes, you can make this vegan too by using Tofu. It still tastes amazing. Many people ask me when it comes vegan, can this recipe be vegan? Chili Paneer you can make as Chili Tofu by same process. It’s vegan and gluten-free as well.

Serving Suggestions

You can serve this as an appetizer or as a main course.

It’s kind of semi-dry version so it works both ways.

Ingredients:

Paneer: Use store-bought or homemade paneer. This dish tastes best with fresh paneer (Indian cottage cheese).

or Tofu: If you are vegan you can use tofu. And this dish will still tastes as delicious as Paneer.

Flour: I use cornstarch for the batter to deep fry or shallow fry paneer. You can use all purpose flour as well for batter.

Vegetables: I use bell peppers (red and green), onions, and scallions (spring onions).

Sauces: I have used red chili sauce, Soy sauce and vinegar. But i like to use Schezwan sauce with tomato ketchup as well and trust me it tastes so good.

Estimated reading time: 6 minutes

How to Make Chili Paneer?

• In a large bowl, add paneer cubes, 3 tbsp of corn flour ( you can add all purpose flour too ) and add 2 tbsp of soy sauce. You can make the batter too or you can just toss it up dry. Mix with paneer well so it well coated with paneer.

• Heat oil to deep fry this. ( i did shallow fry but you always can deep fry or air fry too ). Dip the cubes of paneer in the batter and deep fry until it is golden brown. Place the paneer pieces on a paper towel to drain excess oil and set the crispy paneer aside. If you are shallow frying in a pan add 3 to 4 tbsp of oil and shallow fry until it turned out golden brown.

• In a small bowl, combine the sauces needed for the stir fry – one tablespoon each of soya sauce, vinegar, red chilli sauce, and tomato ketchup (tomato sauce). I add my secret ingredient is schezwan sauce 1 tsp. Mix well and set it aside.
• In another pan or wok, heat 2 tablespoons of oil. Saute ginger and garlic for one minute.

• Add red onion, bell pepper, and green chillies. Stir fry on high heat for 1-2 minutes .
• Add the prepared sauce mixture, salt, and black pepper powder.
• Saute for one minute. It should be sauteed on high heat.
• Add the fried paneer and stir fry for one minute. Turn off the heat and garnish with green onion.

Chilli paneer dry versus gravy

This recipe covers the dry version of chili paneer. For the gravy version, deep-fry the paneer as per this recipe and prepare vegetables, sauces, and a cornstarch slurry. Stir-fry ginger, garlic, and vegetables, then add the sauce mixture, salt, pepper, and one cup of vegetable stock.

Thicken the mixture with the cornstarch slurry, incorporate the fried paneer, and garnish with spring onion greens for a delightful dish.