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]

What can you do with the whey? Mine looked so clear that I assumed everything useful had been leeched out of it in the form of curds, so I tossed it. What should I do differently next time (other than using in bread as dagonell suggested)?

using whey

[cigfran-cg.livejournal.com]

Well, I'm not sure there's a whole lot of use for the acid precipitated whey. The whey from cultured cheese has a lot of the culturing bacteria in it, so it's most important use is as a starter for the next batch. Other than that, and the bread thing, it can be used in soups where'd you'd like a slight cheese flavour, or as cooking liquid for veggies.