Paneer or Indian cottage cheese is a versatile food item, typical of the Indian sub-continent’s diversity. Any Indian regional cuisine gives its own flavor and spice to paneer. Additionally, the cottage cheese’s taste is unrivaled, when home-made. How to make paneer at home?

Making paneer at home yields not only a nutritious food –product but also a natural probiotic in the form of whey water. So you have a double delight as the outcome of a single task, giving you more reason to make home-made Indian cottage cheese at home.
The procedure below will teach you to make paneer from 1 liter of milk, for which you will be needing 1 or ½ cup of lemon juice or white vinegar, whichever is readily available.
•    Take one liter of milk and bring it a boil. Remember to use full-cream milk especially when you are making paneer at home.
•    Once the milk comes to a boil, keep it on low flame, and add the lemon juice or vinegar to the milk.
•    Allow the milk to simmer for 2 – 3 minutes, to make sure that it is completely curdled. Stir continuously while the milk is getting curdled.
•    Transfer the curdled milk to a cheese-cloth(folded-twice to trap the finest curd particles) which is placed atop a colander, which in turn is placed above a wide-mouthed vessel. The bottom -most vessel is for the purpose of collecting whey water, which is an important nutritious by-product while making paneer at home. You could also add a few ingredients such as herbs, ground pepper or salt to the curd-crumbs at this stage.
•    Let the ‘vessel tower’ remain as at the time of binding, more whey water is bound to get squeezed out from the paneer. Now, wrap the cheese cloth over the paneer, and cover it with a lid, to ensure that it is uniformly pressed.
•    Place a heavy weight  such as a chappati(Indian bread)-stone(inverted) on top of the plate.
•    In about 2-3 hours time your cottage cheese will be set  and you are almost at the fag-end of learning how to make paneer at home.
•    Remove the weights and gently remove the cheese-cloth from the surface of the paneer.
•    Store the paneer in the refrigerator for an hour or so, so that you get a solid block of the home-made Indian cottage cheese.

Some tips with home-made  paneer:->
•    While making paneer at home, you might as well define the purpose of the cheese. If the paneer is going to be used for rasgollas or rasmalai, you need the chenna or soft cottage cheese, where the cheese has to be really soft, then instead of applying weight on the cheese –wrap, you simply make it into a bundle and allow it to hang for 20 – 30 minutes.
•    If you find that the paneer cubes after refrigeration is not firm enough you could resort to broiling the cubes in the oven. You put the cubes on a round pizza pan and broil it on high heat, till the cubes develop a golden-brown tinge of color. Leave the oven door slightly open. Make sure to rotate the pan every minute and also turn over the cubes to ensure uniform broiling.
•    The whey water  collected in the process can be put to immediate use, by adding it to the wheat flour while kneading the dough for rotis. If not, it could be refrigerated.

From how to make paneer at home, you would love to explore the myriad dishes you can make tastier by using fresh paneer. Some popular paneer dishes include:-
•    Mattar-Paneer : A gravy dish using peas and cottage cheese in a base of tomatoes, onions with ginger-garlic spice.
•    Paalak Paneer : Spinach and paneer in a combination of indigenous spices of North India, delivering the crème of vegetable curries.
•    Paneer pakodas :   Slices of paneer sandwiching mint-chutney and dipped in gram-flour batter and deep-fried, paneer pakodas are a treat  to eat
•    Paneer Tikka : Paneer grilled on skewers with the typical salad vegetables such as capsicum, tomatoes and onions, with a squeeze of lemon juice.

There are delectable recipes on paneer, and once you learn how to make paneer at home, you have the flavor of freshness seeping into the dish you wish to prepare.

Photo Courtesy : eatlikeagirl.com