how did you make the paneer? i want to try so bad!
Hello! An excellent question!
First, I looked at these two recipes: this one by Rajshri Food on YouTube, and this one by Indian Healthy Recipes.
Then I said a quick prayer and thought of cheese, and then, after one attempt which didn't quite go to plan (for reasons I shall elucidate later), I trawled through some Reddit comments for tips, amalgamated a few methods based on what I did wrong the first time, and then did the following:
Choose your milk! The ideal milk for this is unhomogenised (gold top in the UK, no clue what it is anywhere else because I am pig ignorant) but I actually had the best results with plain old blue top whole milk. Which is to say: it has to be milk. Aside from that, I think it's more forgiving than a lot of stuff online leads you to believe. Lots of things tell you it won't work with anything other than raw or unhomogenised milk, but I can confirm that it will. I do think you'd need to use milk with a higher fat content, though. None of your skimmed malarkey.
In a small jug, either pour about 1tbsp fresh lemon juice (not bottled!) or dilute a quantity of distilled white vinegar or rice vinegar with roughly two parts water. For 568ml milk, I used 1tbsp rice vinegar, because it's all I have. My cupboards, they are sparse. If you're using lemon juice, don't dilute it, as it's a weaker acid. I will also add that I didn't end up using all of the vinegar I'd diluted, as I added it gradually.
Slowly bring your milk up to the boil on a medium heat. This will take quite a long time, so maybe bring a book. Now, this is where I went wrong the first time, because I made it too dang hot, and didn't stir the milk enough. Top tip: get a thermometer, and bring your milk up to 85-90 degrees celsius (I will not be converting this into the devil's Fahrenheit, because I am lazy, and because there is no earthly reason to use such a nonsense metric.) Stir the milk frequently to prevent it from burning and sticking. Ask me how I know this.
As soon as your milk reaches 85 degrees celsius, turn off the heat, and plop an ice cube or two into the milk. This stops it from cooking any further.
Then, immediately pour a small quantity of your diluted vinegar / lemon juice into the milk. You should see the curds and whey start to separate. Heads up: this looks gross! That's fine! All the best things in life are gross, like love! If you've got it right, the whey should turn a greenish-yellow colour, and the curds should be white, soft, and formed in lumps, a bit like me. I'll put a stunning curd photo at the end of this post. You should look forward to it. Back to the milk: if it doesn't split, add a bit more of the vinegar / lemon juice, and keep going until it does. You can actually be more heavy-handed than you'd think here; you won't taste the vinegar, as we'll be rinsing it off later. You can very gently stir the milk to help it along, but please do bear in mind that I said 'very gently'. I shan't be held accountable if you thwack the curds into smithereens with a spatula.
Top tip: If the milk refuses to split, then one of two things is probably the case. Either your acid is too weak / the quantity of it is too small, or your milk is too hot. The first time I made paneer, my milk was too hot, and the curds turned out very dry and crumbly, because they essentially cooked in the milk after splitting. I do think that this whole process takes a bit of trial and error. If you make the same mistake I did, don't panic, and don't throw it all out! You can still use crumbly paneer. Paneer koftas or paneer bhurji are both good options. All paneer is valid, etc etc.
Once your milk has split, drain the curds. Do this by putting a cheese cloth into a colander or sieve, and place the colander or sieve over a large mixing bowl. Pour the curds and whey through the cheese cloth, until all the whey drains through and you're left with just the strained curds. Don't throw out the whey, because you can use it for a bunch of other things - cooking rice, for example, or baking, or making lassi. Food waste? In this economy? I think not.
Rinse the curds, still in their little cheese cloth bed, under the cold tap to remove the vinegar smell. I'd say 30 seconds or so should do it. Just use your nose, if you have one. I personally barely do, so I just did it for 30 seconds and hoped for the best.
Gather the curds into the cloth, and gently squeeze out most of the excess moisture, leaving a little bit in there. You don't want to make it too dry. All the best things in life are a bit wet, like love.
Tie a knot in the cloth to keep the curds secure, and hang it over a mixing bowl for about 30 minutes so that more moisture can drip out. I tied mine to my kitchen tap with an elastic band. Top tip from me to you, that.
This step is optional, but recommended! After 30 minutes, fetch a clean cotton (that part is important, for reasons of Not Getting Strands Of Towel Stuck In Your Cheese) tea towel, and gently tip out the curds onto it. Mix about a teaspoon of corn starch into the curds, and knead it together until you have a relatively cohesive block of cheese. This tip is completely from Rajshri's video, linked above. You don't need to do it, but it does help the cheese to keep its shape for cutting later!
Wrap the block back up in the towel, and press it underneath something fairly heavy for at least an hour. Many people say that a tofu press works well for this. I used an old, abandoned cast iron pan, mostly for the vibes, if I'm honest.
Remove your cheese from its heavy prison, unwrap it, and you should have something like the following:
Ripe and ready for consuming. In terms of quantity, I would estimate (and it really is just an estimate) that you'll get about 10% of your milk volume in paneer. My 568ml carton of blue top milk made about 60g of paneer, and my 2l bottle of gold top milk made about 230g. I then talked about 'paneer yield' for half an hour and Dr Tall Gf rolled her eyes.
That's about it, I think. Go forth and become the cheesemonger you always dreamt you'd be.
And because I promised, here's a hot curd pic for the freaks:
Unbelievably, it's supposed to look like that.
