Paneer

How to make paneer at home?.. Here is the step wise method to make paneer at home. I always find it difficult to bring it in cube form .Mostly, it used to get crumbled and comes out like cheese powder. Thanks to my friend  +Nidhi Aggarwal  , who explained me clearly with pictures and this time I succeeded . Am sharing it for those who are still trying to make paneer as cubes ;) ... Good luck !

INGREDIENTS:

Whole Milk - 1 litre ( Use full fat milk only)( Yields 200 gms of paneer) .
Vinegar or lemon juice - 1 table spoon


METHOD:

1. In a large pan, pour the milk and allow it boil. Keep stirring continuously , so that  the milk doesnt get stick to the pan and get burnt.

2. Once it comes to boil , add 1 tablespoon vinegar or 1 tablespoon lemon juice  and mix well for a minute. You can see, that milk starts to curdle and comes out as in picture below.Switch off the flame. Wait for 5 minutes and let it cool.

3. Take a thin cloth. I used an unused white towel, with little big pores  to filter the water. 

4. Take a sieve and put the cloth over it, with a vessel under neath . pour the contents in pan over the cloth . Leave it like that for another 15 to 20 minutes, until it gets cool down to touch. 

5. Once it cool down , lift the cloth together with paneer and roll it and squeeze the excess water out of it. 

6. Now take a cutting board.Place the rolled cloth over it and press it all sides and form a round shape as in picture below. 

7. Now, the paneer ready. We need to keep more weight over that, so that it wont fall apart or break. I used a filter plate as shown below for placing the paneer. 

8. Now, take a big bowl. Place the filter plate over it. Then put the paneer with cloth over it. Above the paneer, put a plate. Above the plate, keep a pressure cooker or any heavy vessel with water. The point is, if you keep more weight, the paneer gets hardened. Allow it to stay that way for 45 minutes.

9. After 45 minutes, slowly remove weight , and put the paneer with cloth in a vessel and refrigerate it. No need to keep it in freezer. You can just keep in the fridge for around 2 to 3 hours. After that, take out from fridge, and remove the cloth. You can see , the paneer has hardened as in picture below. 

10. Now it is ready to be made to cubes. Cut to your desired shapes and use it for any subzis of  your choice. Please note that, you can cut to cubes only when you wish to make the subzi. Other wise, you can keep in fridge as a whole block and take out and make cubes when necessary. 

NOTE: 

Please also check my paneer butter masala recipe in my blog.