Home-Made Paneer Recipe

Making cheese at home can be a challenging art, or in the case of Paneer, it can be quite easy. Paneer is most often thought of as the most common cheese used in Indian cuisine. This is an unaged cheese and does not use rennet in its making. If you have fresh milk, vinegar, (or lime or lemon juice,) and some cheese cloth, you can be eating fresh cheese in just a couple hours!

We have a raw goat milk share, so that is the milk we use to make our paneer, but you can use any whole milk.

Ingredients:

1/2 gallon whole milk (cow or goat is fine)

4 tsp. vinegar, or fresh lime, or lemon juice

In a heavy bottomed pan, bring milk to a rolling boil, stirring to keep it from burning. Once boiling, add your vinegar or lime or lemon juice. Keep stirring

The milk will begin to curdle, creating curds and whey. (The whey is the greenish liquid.) Turn off heat once curds stop forming and let sit 5 minutes.

Line a colander with cheese cloth and slowly pour curds in to drain off the whey.

If you want to add flavor such as salt, pepper, herbs, etc, do that not. Flavoring is not needed though as this cheese is great without additional flavoring.

Gather the sides of the cheese cloth and wring out additional whey. You can tie the cloth around a large spoon and hang over the colander to drain for 15 minutes more if you’d like.

For a firmer paneer, place some weight on cheese wrapped in cheese cloth for another two hours.

Once firm, you can cut it into cubes to use in recipes, or snack on it on its own.

The paneer will keep in an airtight container up to a week in the refrigerator.