Restaurant-Style Vegetable Korma at Home: Ingredients and Method

Eating the same kind of curry every day gets monotonous, and on 31 March 2026 the lifestyle desk of the Bangladeshi news site Jagonews24 offered a way to vary it: a restaurant-style vegetable korma made at home from simple ingredients most kitchens already have. The recipe uses papaya, potato, carrot, mushroom, tomato, yardlong beans and capsicum, and builds its thick sauce on a ground paste of cashew nuts, poppy seeds and fried onion (beresta), finished with sour yoghurt.

Wikipedia describes korma as a dish of meat or vegetables braised with yoghurt, water or stock and spices to produce a thick sauce, originating in the Mughal Empire. The word comes from the Hindi-Urdu qorma, meaning braising, and is ultimately derived from the Turkic qawirma, a fried thing. The method is to sear the meat or vegetables in ghee over high heat and then cook them slowly with little liquid. Korma often features almonds, cashews or other nuts, and coconut; during the 18th century cooks at the Mughal court enriched the Persian-style stew with almonds, garlic, spices and yoghurt. Navratan korma is a well-known vegetarian version made with vegetables and paneer or nuts, sometimes both. Wikipedia also notes that in modern Bangladeshi cuisine some cooks use thick evaporated milk in place of yoghurt.

Jagonews24 listed 20 ingredients:

• Papaya: half a cup
• Potato: half a cup
• Carrot: half a cup
• Mushroom: half a cup
• Tomato: half a cup
• Yardlong beans (borboti): half a cup
• Capsicum: half a cup
• Chopped ginger: 2 tablespoons
• Chopped garlic: 1 teaspoon
• Cinnamon: 2 sticks
• Bay leaves: 2
• Green chillies: 5 or 6
• Poppy seeds: 1 teaspoon
• Sugar: 1 teaspoon
• Sour yoghurt: 1 cup
• Cashew nuts: 2 tablespoons
• Fried onion (beresta): half a cup
• Ghee and oil: as needed
• Garam masala powder: 1 teaspoon
• Salt: to taste

The first step of the method fries onion, but the list gives no separate quantity of raw onion; onion appears in it only as beresta.

• Fry the onion, garlic and ginger well in a little ghee.
• Put the poppy seeds, fried onion, cashew nuts, garlic and ginger in a blender and grind them into a smooth korma paste.
• Heat ghee and oil in a pan. When the oil is hot, fry the cinnamon and bay leaves lightly.
• Add the korma paste and stir it for a while.
• Add the vegetables, cut as you like, and fry them well in the spices.
• When the vegetables are done, add hot water as needed and the yoghurt.
• Cover and cook on low heat for 15 minutes, until the vegetables are soft and cooked through.
• Sprinkle in sugar to taste, the green chillies and the garam masala powder.
• When the oil rises to the top, take the pan off the heat and serve hot with roti, naan or polao.

A shahi navratan korma recipe that Gulf News published from its archives in March 2022 follows the same pattern: potatoes, carrots, peas, pumpkin and paneer are fried and combined with onions, cinnamon, cloves and a ginger and garlic paste, then covered and cooked on low heat for 15 minutes. There a cup of yoghurt is beaten and stirred into the vegetables and cooked until the gravy thickens, and the ingredients also include a teaspoon of sugar and a teaspoon of garam masala. The paper describes the dish as a cashew paste-based vegetable curry. The Jagonews24 version swaps the paneer for vegetables found in any Bangladeshi market, such as papaya, yardlong beans and mushroom, and adds poppy seeds and fried onion to the nut paste.

Photo: Divya Kudua / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)

Sources: Jagonews24, Wikipedia (Korma), Gulf News