Paneer Kulcha

Punjabi food is nutritious and full of bucolic flavour. The practice of cooking in tandoors or community ovens endures in the country side even until nowadays. The food is typified by a richness of products of dairy origin in the form of dahi, paneer, and malai.

Kulchas are flatbreads (made from refined flour) packed with a variety of contents – right from mixed vegetables to paneer to potatoes.

Kulchas are usually served alongside pickle, yoghurt raita (an Indian side dish comprising yoghurt, spices and chopped cucumbers), and a spicy chickpea curry.

Specifically, as for paneer kulcha, the flatbread is stuffed with a mixture of cottage cheese or crumbled paneer that is slightly spiced.

Health Benefits

Paneer kulcha contains a significant amount of carbohydrate, proteins, fats and even micronutrients such as zinc. A single meal gives calories close to 1700 Kcal. It is indeed a nutritious meal.

Ingredients

grated paneer (cottage cheese): 200 gm

refined flour: ½

medium onion: ½

salt to taste

powdered red chilli: ½ teaspoon

cottage cheese: ½ teaspoon

Kalonji – onion seeds as required

Butter as required

baking powder: ½ teaspoon

maida – refined flour: 2 cups

baking soda: ¼ teaspoon

salt: ½ teaspoon

milk: ½ cup

Sugar: 1 teaspoon

yogurt: 1 teaspoon

Oil as required

How To Make Paneer Kulcha

1. Pour and mix the flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt together in a bowl. After adding yoghurt, milk, and sugar, work the mixture well into a dough that is medium and soft.
2. On the dough, add a tablespoon of oil. Leave the dough covered for an hour with a moist cloth. Chop up onions and sift it with paneer in a basin. Add red chilli powder and salt and mix well.
3. Using a little oil, smear your palms and take on one palm a part of the dough. Spread out the dough using your fingers, put a ration of the filling in the middle, fold the edges and carefully seal it to completely enfold the filling. Then shape into pedas.
4. In a similar fashion, work the remaining dough and filling. On every peda, place little oil and lightly press. Then have them put aside for the quarter of an hour.
5. Over every peda, scatter a few seed of onion. With water, moisten your left hand; put a peda on it and spread into a circular kulcha with the aid of both hands.
6. Make hot a tawa – convex or concave disc-shaped frying pan made from a metal. Put a kulcha on it with the water-dampened side facing down. Close and cook until the underside turns golden. Toss, close and cook until the other side turns golden too.
7. Serve hot sprinkled with butter.

You can relish your paneer kulcha whenever you desire and at any place you are. Simply preserve it in a Vaya Tyffyn lunchbox while you continue with your work.

Come lunchtime, it will be there for you, sizzling hot still as if you just lifted it off the hot tawa. Vaya Tyffyn lunchbox will keep your meal warm.

Trivia

Kulcha is a flatbread that takes its origin from the Indian subcontinent. There are many variants. Paneer kulcha is a flatbread stuffed with paneer which is cottage cheese.