Homemade Paneer

Last week during soup group, one of the girls made some delicious paneer to go along with some tomato soup. I was inspired to make it by how simple she made it sound. Just lemon juice and milk. I found some simple and easy to follow instructions on this site.

Ingredients:

1/2 gallon of milk (I used 2%)
2-3 tbsp fresh lemon juice

Equipment:

Cheesecloth (got it at the East End Coop)
Strainer

1. Line a strainer with a double layer of cheesecloth. Set the strainer over a large bowl to catch the whey.

2. Bring the milk to a rolling boil and then turn off the heat. (I somehow managed to burn some milk onto the bottom of the pan, so make sure not to do that. This is why there are some brownish chunks in the cheese at the end. Ideally, the cheese should be white but this was my first time making it so oh well.)

3. Add 2 tbsp of the lemon juice and stir until the curds and whey separate. It will be fairly obvious when this happens because there will literally be white chunks (curds) in yellowish looking liquid (whey). If the mixture does not separate, add another tablespoon of lemon juice.

4. Pour the mixture into the strainer and let cool. (At this point, this mixture is ricotta cheese!!!) Once it is cool enough to handle, squeeze as much liquid as you can out of the cheesecloth.

5. Set the cheese in the center of a plate and place another plate on top of it. Weigh down the top plate with some canned goods for about 1 hour to press even more liquid out of it. Now the cheese is ready to eat!

I fried my cheese in a saucepan until it was golden brown with some olive oil to give it some color. I also added some salt after it was cooked for more flavor since it is a mild cheese.

As an additional note, I used the whey to cook the lentils and split peas in for some extra flavor. This site tells you what you can do with whey so you don't have to throw it out. It is apparently full of vitamins and flavor.