Making Paneer cheese

Bill2673

I made this on Friday evening, couldn't get over how easy it was.

Boil a two litre of milk,

Put the juice of a lemon into a glass of warm water

Turn down the heat on the milk to very low, and add the lemon water

Stir, until full curdled (i.e. the milk has turned watery)

Extract the curd by pouring through a muslin sheet. Rinse it to get rid of lemon taste.

Wrap the curd tight in the muslin and place under a heavy object for the night (I used a heavy casserole dish).

I would say in terms of difficulty it was more difficult than making scrambled eggs but a lot less difficult than making an ommelette.

So we had a very nice palak paneer the following evening, the cheese was much nicer than the packet stuff i ocassionally buy in Indian stores.

Sorry if this story has been told before, thought some people might find it helpful.

Sapsorrow

Ah it's amazing isn't it! I used to make it a lot when I was buyig raw milk from a neighbour. The only problem I found was you have to use so much milk to get a decent amount of paneer and it was hard to find a use for the whey. It's also hard to resist eating loads of it before you actually get to the point of putting it into the curry and then you have f-all left! The stuff if the shops is almight pricey, I grabbed a block in my local asian deli a while back (was making a curry for a dinner party) and brough it up to the counter his said five euros please and I said no thanks and put it back in the fridge. Went in 2 weeks later, grabbed a block, same guy working and asked him how much it was this time and he said two fifty so I bought it, cheeky feckers

Sapsorrow

Oh just a note, you don't have to leave it overnight unless you want a really hard cheese, a couple of hours is plenty if it's going straight in a curry!

Bill2673

Thanks for those replies folks. Some useful information there.

Regarding the wastage of whey, my rationalisation is that (i) in terms of pure cost, its still a bit cheaper to make it myself (ii) the guys in the factory making the paneer are also probably throwing out quite a lot of whey also (I may well be wrong there, I know there is a big industry in whey protein in ireland and the US.....just not sure that there is in India and Pakistan or wherever this stuff comes from).

Sapsorrow

Oh I just meant I myself found it hard to find a use for it as I don't bake with cereal flours, If I did I ould use it in bread dough or something like that.