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

[ichur72.livejournal.com]

Neat! I bet it was yummy, too.

[kayre]

Just lime juice? Wow! I wonder if that would work with LactAid milk. How's it taste?

[dagonell.livejournal.com]

My wife and I do something similar to this all the time. We live in the country and get two gallons a week from the farmer. Difference is, we use rennet instead of lime. Put it in a big bowl, add the rennet, let it sit in a turned-off oven (pilot light on) all night. In the morning, cheese and whey. The whey is used to make bread. Yum!
-- Dagonell

[magid.livejournal.com]

I'm so glad it worked! I used lemon juice, because that was what I had, and it worked fine too. I ran out of time to do anything useful with the whey, unfortunately.