Cheesemaking: My first attempt at making Indian style paneer cheese at home £0.59p per portion

I like to make things from scratch.  I know where it's been, what's in it and who's handled it prior to eating.  Cheese is no exception and I thought I'd have a go at making cheese in my kitchen at home.

Homemade paneer cheese cubes

I've read widely on the Internet about how to make paneer cheese.  There are various methods, some requiring exact temperature control using an instant read thermometer, others more like a true Indian family would make at home using milk, yogurt and/or lemon juice.

If you've been reading my blog you'll have noticed that I'm not an artistic cook and prefer the rustic cookery techniques and methods and so I've opted to use the basic milk and yogurt method.

I can't credit any one particular site for this recipe and so have left links to a few that I read in preparation for making my own paneer for a curry later today.

Ingredients

1. 500ml of whole milk (blue top)
2. 50g  of live plain yogurt
3. *I have bottled lemon juice in my store cupboard so this was on standby

Cost analysis:

1 pint of whole milk (just under 1 pint as Himself pinched some) = £0.49p

50g of live plain yoghurt = £0.10p

Total cost to produce one portion of paneer cheese = £0.59p - could be cheaper using lemon juice

Traditional paneer has no seasoning but you can obviously add salt, pepper, chilli or whatever you fancy to the curds and mix prior to forming the cheese.

You'll also need a large saucepan, muslin or jelly cloth (I used a voile curtain I'd bought ages ago which didn't fit), a spoon to stir, a slotted spoon and a colander or sieve.

I've only made a small batch as I am the only person eating this and have a small appetite, Himself is greenvegphobic. You can double, triple or quadruple this recipe to your requirements.

 Here's what I did.

I lined my colander with the muslin and placed in my kitchen sink ready for the curds.

Pour the milk into the saucepan with the yoghurt close to hand.  Bring the milk just to the point where it starts to bubble and swell, the point where it would rise up and over if left a second longer.  Then dump the whole lot of yoghurt in.  It's important to leave the pan on the heat.  Things should happen really quickly now, the milk will curdle within one minute, if you're concerned that nothing's happening you can add one or two drops of lemon juice to help it along.  

The video shows my paneer after one minute, it's curdling and you can just see the yellowish whey to the back right-hand side of the pan.  It was quite steamy and difficult to film using one hand.

Curd cheese freshly removed from the whey

You can now take the curds out of the whey with a slotted spoon and put into the muslin lined colander.  It will look like cottage cheese.  There are a variety of methods at this stage, some go straight to press the cheese, others drain the liquid.  I chose to drain the liquid by hanging the curds from the tap for 15 minutes or longer for a denser cheese.

The next stage is pressing the curds to form the, hard, crumbly cheese we're used to seeing.

I folded the muslin over the curds and placed onto a work surface, then I placed a heavy wooden chopping board with the saucepan of whey on top of that to weigh it down and form the cheese.

You can leave your cheese pressing from 30 minutes to 2 hours depending on how firm a set you want.  I left mine for 40 minutes and it is formed but soft and crumbles, which I like.

When I make this again I will make a larger batch, firstly because the block was quite thin and secondly because it freezes well and I can have paneer in the freezer ready to go.

I've popped mine in the fridge in a tupperware of cold water ready for my curry tonight.  Yum yum roll on supper time.

Some of the cheesemaking sites I read with links:

Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall

BBC

Journey Kitchen Blog