Bengali Prawn Malai Curry/ Chingri Maacher Malai Curry
Chingri Malai Curry is an authentic Bengali Prawn curry dish. It is made with spices and coconut milk into a thick curry that is had with plain white rice.
Try this out at home and I promise you will fall in love with this dish. There are many variations of this recipe available but this recipe particularly is how I like it.
Prep time: 30-45 minutes
Serves: 4
For printable/ downloadable recipe: Click Here
Lets get straight to how to make it ( Pictorial Recipe):
Here I took about 18-20 large sized prawns. Cleaned and washed them. I separated the prawn heads as I am going to use it for making prawn stock (optional), you can skip this part but it adds a lot of flavour to the curry.
I marinated the prawns with some tumeric powder and salt.
While the prawns marinate let us see how to make the "prawn stock":
Lets take a pan and heat it up and then add 1 tbsp of mustard oil to it and heat it up properly.
To the oil add the prawn heads and fry it till it changes color and becomes this beautiful red color.
Now add about 1/2 to 1 glass of water to the prawn head and bring it to a boil.
Cover and let it boil for about 2 minutes till the prawn heads release its flavor into the water.
Strain the liquid into a separate bowl and keep it aside. That's your prawns stock. You can add this to any curry you want to enhance taste. But today we're using it for the prawn curry.
Now let us start making the actual "Prawn Malai Curry":
Heat Up a clean pan again and add about 2 tbsp mustard oil to it. Add the prawns to it and fry on both sides of the prawns evenly for 2-3 minutes. We do not need to cook the prawns completely as it is going to be cooked in the curry too.
Take the prawns out and keep it aside.
In the same pan where we fried the prawns in the remaining oil add 1 tbsp of cumin seeds and 2-3 bay leaves, 1-2 cardamom, 1 stick of cinnamon and cook it for 1/2 minute.
Next add about 2 tbsp of ginger garlic paste and cook it for another 2 minutes till it releases its raw smell.
When the ginger garlic paste is nicely done add in 1 large onion paste and saute it till it caramelizes.
Now add 1 tbsp cumin powder, 1 tbsp coriander powder, 1/2 tbsp turmeric powder, 1/2-1 tbsp red chilly powder and salt to taste.
Saute it till it releases the sides of the pan and releases the oil.
Take about 1/2 glass of coconut milk.
Add the coconut milk and add a little water to dilute it if you want it to be runny is consistency.
I added 4 green chillies slit into half.
Add in the fried prawns.
Now add in the prawns stock we prepared earlier.
Cover and cook it on a medium flame for about 10-15 minutes.
Your "Prawn Malai Curry" is ready to be served with some rice.
Enjoy!
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