Food
and cooking tips and techniques:
How
to make your own Paneer - Indian Cheese
This
is the recipe and method for making your own Paneer
- Indian Cheese.
Ingredients
10
cups whole milk
1/2 cup buttermilk / yogurt (more maybe needed, so
keep some extra)
Method
- In
a large heavy bottomed pan, bring the milk to a boil
over medium heat. Stir often to ensure that the milk
is not sticking to the bottom of the pan.
- When
milk starts to boil, lower heat and add the buttermilk
and stir until the milk starts to separate into curds.
- Remove
from heat as soon as this happens. You can even add
a few ice cubes to the curd-whey mix. The heat will
make the protein tougher. Hence the need to expose
the cheese to as little heat as possible.
- If
the curds are not forming, add a little more buttermilk
and cook for a couple of minutes more. And do the
above as soon as the curds form.
- Pour
the curds-whey mix into a collander lined with several
layers of cheese cloth or even a layer of muslin,
draining onto a dish that will collect the whey.
- Collect
the sides of the cheesecloth or muslin and tie them
up together and twist gently to help drain the whey
from the curds.
- Place
the bundled curds on a tray and press this bundle
with a heavy pan/container or obejct. Make sure this
heavy weight covers the bundle fully.
- To
make cheese for dessert recipes or for koftas or even
a bhujia, weight it down for no more than a half hour.
- For
recipes where cheese cubes are used, weight the bundle
down for an hour or more. This will make the cheese
form a firm mass that can be cut into neat cubes.
Note:
I
use buttermilk as it makes for cheese that has very
little sour flavor. People use lemon or vinegar, these
curdle the milk quickly but leave a strong aftertaste.
This aftertaste is not nice when making desserts with
cheese.
Try
and use the cheese the same day as you make it. The
more time it is kept the dryer it becomes and the harder
it will be. When making soft cheese for desserts. Weight
it down for a shorter time as I write above. You can
leave more moisture in, if you know you will not use
it till the next day. The cheese will get dryer in refrigeration.
For
the firm cheese, you can make the firm cube and store
it overnight in chilled water. But you cannot put the
cheese in water until a firm cake, with all the whey
drained is formed. So, first make your cheese cube,
and if you are not using it the same day, immerse it
in a container of water, seal with a cover and cut only
when ready to use into smaller cubes.
Suvir
Saran
©
Suvir Saran, 2001
 This
article comes from a web site which gives a first class
insight into Indian Cooking, what it is about and how
to create some of the recipes in your own home.
It
is the web site of Suvir Saran, a native of New
Delhi, India, who was raised on traditional Indian cooking.
He is a passionate and inventive cooking teacher as
well as a sort of unofficial ambassador of Indian culture;
wherever he goes (in India, Europe and the United States)
he finds himself teaching people - colleagues in classes
and jobs, strangers in airports and on the street -
to love the food and culture of his native country.
To
learn more why not visit Suvir Saran's own
web site - click
here
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