Instant Pot Indian Matar Paneer Recipe (2024)

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 dhabaMatar 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 MAKINGINSTANT 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.

1. You want the vegetables to cook in minimal water to facilitate as much of a Maillard reaction as possible.
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. 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.
6. 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.

1. Instant Pot Butter Chicken (my most popular recipe) or get the vegetarian version HERE
2. Tomato Coconut Soup
3. (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.