I’m a regular stalker of the discounted shelves and fridges in our local supermarket. I’m very strict though, I only ever pick something up that I would have bought anyway. On a recent, late evening trip to Morrisons in Todmorden, I saw a 4-pint bottle of whole organic milk for 89p down from £1.84. We don’t generally use full fat milk, and we never buy it in such large quantities, but I knew that I wanted to try making home made paneer.

Paneer is a simple curd cheese – similar to cottage cheese, mascarpone and quark – that relies on acid rather than rennet to form. From earlier research I knew that only full fat milk really works – and you need a fair amount of milk to make a big enough portion of paneer worth the process. You also need the acid which separates the curds from the whey. This can be in the form of natural yoghurt, citric acid, lemon juice or vinegar.

The process was like a doing a school science experiment. Heat the milk in a big saucepan, add the acid, stir and the alchemy of the separating liquid from solid happened instantaneously! I knew it was simple to do – but didn’t realise it was that simple. Why hadn’t I done it before? Paneer costs about £7 per kilo in the shops – when you can actually get hold of it that is!

We used some of it when making a curry and some of it like you would ricotta, in a spinach & paneer lasagne. We saved the whey and used it in place of the water when making a dhal. It made the dish slightly sweeter, creamier and tastier.

Here’s how I made it…

Simple home made paneer

Print recipe Pin recipe

Course Main Course

Cuisine Indian

Ingredients

  

• 4 pints/2 litres full cream milk
• 150 g plain natural yoghurt
• 2 tsp white wine vinegar
• or 1½tsp powdered citric acid
• or 1½tsp lemon juice
• ½ tsp salt

Instructions

 

• Sterilise a large piece of muslin, cheesecloth (or a lint-free glass cloth like I used) by putting it into a pan/heatproof bowl and covering it completely with boiling water from a kettle
• Using tongs, remove the cloth from the water and spread it over a metal colander
• If you plan on using the whey, put the colander into a large mixing bowl so that all the liquid can be collected
  
• Put the milk into a heavy-bottomed pan and heat to boiling stirring regularly to prevent it burning
• When it begins to bubble, add the yoghurt and vinegar turn off the heat and stir. The curds should separate from the whey
  
• Set aside until cool enough to handle
• Pour the contents of the saucepan into the cloth covered colander
  
• Remove the colander from the mixing bowl, put the colander into the kitchen sink and carefully rinse the curds
• Sprinkle evenly with salt
• Take up the corners of the cloth into your hands and twist & squeeze as much of the liquid out as possible
  
• Form the cloth into a block shape
  
• (I put the cloth into a DIY 'mould', a plastic container that some mushrooms came in that I punched holes in the bottom of)
  
• Weigh it down with something heavy (I put a jar of dried split peas into an identical mushroom container and popped that on top)
  
• Put the paneer on to an under-plate and refrigerate with the weight still on top for about half an hour
• The paneer is ready to cut into cubes to be used or can be removed from the cloth, covered in cling film/saran wrap and left in the fridge for up to 5 days

Keyword cheese,, paneer