Home Made Paneer.

INGREDIENTS:
1 Litre of full fat/full cream milk (you can use fresh milk or UHT milk).
Juice from 1 big lemon or 2 tbspn lemon juice.

METHOD:
Boil milk.

Once the milk boils, squeeze lemon juice into it.

You will see that the milk starts to curdle. Stir and allow to boil on a medium or low flame.

Continue to boil (for approximately 8-10 minutes, stirring in between occasionally) till you see the liquid part has become clear but it may have a very slight pale yellow color.

Switch off the gas. You need to strain the cottage cheese using a strainer.

Keep a cotton handkerchief on the strainer and pour the curdled milk in it, rinsing the container in which you boiled milk with some water and pour this water so you take all the cheese that might be stuck on the utensil. Do the straining part in the wash basin or make sure you put an empty container below the strainer.

Wash the cottage cheese below running tap water. Be careful that the water should not be overflowing or else the cheese will fall out of the strainer.

After you have washed the cheese well, squeeze out the extra water as shown:

Squeeze out as much water as you can from the cheese. Your cottage cheese is ready. You can use this cheese to make dishes that will use scrambled cottage cheese as shown:

OR

If you want to make cottage cheese cubes you need to process it further.

Squeeze all the water out.

Flatten the handkerchief between your palms.

Keep it on a flat plate now.

Put another flat plate on it, basically sandwich it between 2 flat plates.

Keep something heavy on it, so the heavy weight is evenly spread on the cheese. I have placed a pressure cooker filled with water. Leave this undisturbed for about 1-2 hours.

Take the weight and the plates off. Open the handkerchief. The cheese is now 1 big circular piece.

Gently take off the handkerchief.

You can cut it into small squares now (as the cheese will be firm now).

Use the cottage cheese fresh or you can even pack it in a zip lock, freeze it and use later.

OR

You can always buy the ready pack available in most Indian stores and some super markets should have them as well. The brand names that Indian stores mostly have is Amul paneer and Kohinoor Paneer.

NUTRITIP:
Home made paneer is a good source of Protein, Vitamin B12, Potassium and Selenium, and a very good source of Vitamin D, Riboflavin, Calcium and Phosphorus.