Paneer made dishes are very popular in India, particularly in Northern India. There are so many delicious paneer made dishes available in India. For vegetarian, those are most preferred dishes. Paneer do pyaza dhaba style is also a very popular food and most favorite one for some people. ‘Paneer‘ is basically cottage cheese and ‘pyaz‘ means onion in Hindi. Here ‘Do‘ (do means two in Hindi) indicates double onion or add onion in two parts. One is to make gravy and another part to add onion layers in that gravy along with paneer cubes. That is why it is called as ‘Paneer Do Pyaza’.

Paneer across the country
The list of paneer-made dishes is very long in the Indian subcontinent. Paneer is nothing but cottage cheese as said earlier. Anybody can make paneer at home too but many people face problem to extract water from raw paneer. That is why most people prefer to buy paneer from the market. Such paneer is not moisturized. It is soft and easy to cut into pieces as needed. But if you want to make scrambled paneer then you can use homemade paneer. For any other dishes you have to compress it as much as possible to extract water from it. Homemade moisturized paneer has a different name in Eastern part of India. Such moisturized paneer is called as ‘chhena‘ in West Bengali and some parts of Odisha, Bihar & Jharkhand. Chhena is used to make so many delicious sweet dishes.
Paneer do pyaza & other paneer based dishes
This dish is not as much popular as shahi paneer, paneer butter masala, kadai paneer etc. But many people in Punjab, Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Haryana and Rajasthan love this food. You can have most traditional and tastiest paneer do pyaza at roadside dhaba (local restaurants) along the major highways in Northern Indian states. If you are from any of those places or an avid traveller then you must have an idea about this dish. Particularly who prefer roadways to travel and enjoy local food while they are travelling must have tasted this paneer do pyaza dhaba style. Though tastes of paneer do pyaza vary from restaurant to restaurant but still, it has a unique taste and you can easily distinguish this paneer do pyaza from any other paneer dishes.
Paneer do pyaza dhaba style & its taste
This food is not so spicy and little sweet in taste little amount of sugar is used here to bring sweet taste. Here fresh cream or full cream milk is used. Sun-dried red chilli powder is also added to this food. So you can enjoy both hot and sweet taste. Most people prefer to have this dish with roti or rice. You can have this with pea rice, pulao, plain rice, naan, butter naan, tawa roti or even tandoori roti.
As said earlier onion or pyaz is added to this Paneer Do Pyaza dhaba style for two times. Firstly, onion paste is used to bring mouth-watering taste in gravy and then layers of the onion are added to make this special. A sufficient amount of cream is used here so people generally do not add any extra ghee to this dish. Many people find this name very funny and too much desi. But when people will come to know the reason behind such naming they will find it so logical, Haha.
Paneer do pyaza at restaurant & its price
I tried this food many times in my life. Mostly I prefer to have this at roadside dhaba because there you will find authentic and tastiest Paneer Do Pyaza. That too at very lower price. I tried this at Pitampura, Delhi and also Panipat district, Haryana. Differences in price can be significantly noticed in both cases. One was at 140 Rupees and another one was 75 Rupees. So if you want to try this at a better AC restaurant it may cost more than 200 Rupees. Though few years back those are offered at such prices. Now in 2017 it may be higher.
Did you ever try Paneer do pyaza dhaba style? How was it? Which one do you find better – paneer do pyaza or shahi paneer? I liked paneer do pyaza with pea rice or pulao. It is because it tastes creamy. It has lightly sweet, sour and chili flavor. But to be honest Shahi paneer is best with butter naan or any other Indian breads (roti). 🙂 .
This dish is also very easy to make. So if you want to get the same restaurant like the taste then you can enjoy that at home and that too at very lower cost. I always prefer to make this at home rather than order at a restaurant. Though having a meal at a restaurant has its own ambience to enjoy but a meal at home also enjoyable and nobody can deny this. What will you say? So are you ready to make this?
How to make this Paneer do pyaza dhaba style?
To make masala or spicy almost dry paneer do pyaza you need ginger, garlic, onion, cumin powder, red chilli powder, dried fenugreek leaves (kasuri methi), cardamom, tomato etc. Traditionally fresh cream is used to make this dish but here full cream milk is used to make this dish more delicious. So when you cook tomato and onion based gravy with full cream milk then you can see a shine in your gravy and mouthwatering flavor will reach to your nose and it will spread fantastic aroma in the air. Water is not generally needed to make this dish but you can pour some water to adjust gravy if needed.
Paneer do pyaza (dhaba style) recipe
- Paneer - 200 gm, cut into small pieces
- Onion / pyaz - 2 large size (1 chopped + 1 separate & cut each layers into 2-3 pieces)
- Ginger / adrak - 2 tsp, paste
- Garlic / lahsun - 1 tsp, paste
- Tomato / tamatar - 1 small size, chopped
- Cumin / jeera - 1.5 tsp, powder
- Red chili / lal mirch - 2 tsp
- Dried fenugreek leaves / Kasuri methi - pinches of
- Cardamom / elaichi - 2 pieces
- Full cream milk - ½ cup
- Water - ½ cup, if needed
- Salt - as needed
- Oil - 1.5 tbsp
- Heat oil in a cooking pan and add cardamom, fry it till you get fantastic aroma of cardamom
- Fry garlic paste, ginger paste and 1 chopped onion in a cooking, use refined oil to cook
- Now add cumin powder and red chili powder and mix with gravy
- Add finely chopped tomatoes and cook till it releases oil
- Now pour half cup of full cream milk & onion layers and boil till gravy almost dried up, stir continuously to get better result, add water if needed
- Now add paneer pieces into the gravy and mix with gravy and cook in low flame for 3-4 minutes
- Spread kasuri methi or dried fenugreek leaves and mix
- Switch off flame and serve hot with rice or roti (Indian bread)
Do you like paneer dishes then try these recipes. If you want to try paneer do pyaza dhaba style then do not forget to share your experience here. You can even share any tip to improve this YUMMY paneer do pyaza and make it YUMMIER, haha.
in this recepie you have mentioned that pyaz(onion) is used twice, but you did not mention how to use the choped layerd onion in the dish
Thanks, you have spotted a genuine mistake and replied here. Corrected now.