fun with cheese!

[cellio]

magid recently linked to this recipe for making paneer, an Indian cheese. I like mattar paneer and generally use soft mozzerella for the cheese, so I decided to try making my own.

I started by boiling half a gallon of milk in an enamel pot (the only non-reactive dairy pot I have). A little milk burned onto the bottom of the pot, but it didn't affect the flavor and it came off after a soak and a scrub, so no harm done. First you bring the milk to a boil:
Then you add the lime juice and stir for several minutes. I thought the curds would get bigger, so when they didn't I added more juice, which was probably unnecessary.
This is what I got for curds. (For calibration, it's a four-quart pot.)
Someone was very interested in the proceedings:
After making curds and letting them sit undisturbed for a while, it was time to gather the curds in cheesecloth. The collander was to keep the cloth from going astray; the bowl was in case it looked like further processing of the whey would be relevant. (It wasn't -- nice and clear.)
Tie loosely and let drain for half an hour.
Wrap tightly to squeeze out remaining liquid and form a ball.
The ball that resulted half an hour later was pretty solid. I'm not sure, but it might have been too dry. The next step was to refrigerate for a few hours.
Now, on to the mattar paneer. The cheese crumbled a tiny bit while slicing, but held together.
Add the cheese to the skillet:
Yum!

Comments

[cellio]

I thought there would be a problem with pasteurized milk. (You get yours straight from the cow, right?) Obviously I was wrong: this worked fine.

How do you use the whey? Just straight substitution for an equal part of water?

[dagonell.livejournal.com]

First, yes we get our milk straight from the cow. However, *we* pasturize it at home. We bought a one-gallon pasturizing machine on e-bay. Pour milk into steel bucket. Insert bucket in machine. Turn machine on and fill sink with cold water and ice cubes. When machine buzzes take bucket out of machine and put in sink to cool rapidly and avoid 'cooked milk' taste. I can handle the bucket out of the machine, my wife requires a pot-holder.

Second, yes we substitute equal parts whey for water in making bread. And my wife says she leaves the milk in the oven for two nights to make cheese. And you skim the cream off the top so that only milk goes into the oven. A little cream is okay, she figures it's equal to what the stores sell as 2%.
-- Dagonell