Simple home made paneer
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