Paneer is a fresh, white cheese common in South Asian cuisine. It may be wrapped in dough,  deep-fried and served with curry, or cubed and cooked in certain curries. This homemade paneer cheese recipes results in a firm paneer that you can fry/grill like halloumi cheese.

Makes approximately 400g

Ingredients

• 2L full cream homogenised milk

• 1.5 tsp. salt

• 1 ¼ tsp. citric acid diluted in 30ml water

Instructions

1. Pour the milk, and salt into a saucepan

2. Bring the milk to 93°C, whilst stirring the base of the pot constantly, to prevent scalding on the base

3. Once you reach 93°C , remove the pot from the heat and stir in your diluted citric acid. Once the citric acid has gone into the mixture, stir it through very quickly (approx. 5 seconds), then stop stirring immediately as soon as the curd begins to form. If you keep stirring the curds as they are forming, you will break them apart and end up with a very low yield of cheese

4. Leave the Paneer curds untouched in the pot for a minimum of 20 minutes, allowing the curds to cool and firm up

5. Scoop the Paneer curds into the cheese cloth lined colander, wrap and cover the curds completely, and set a bowl of water on top, to press. Press for a minimum of two hours, or until the curds have formed one firm slab of paneer

6. Once the paneer is firm enough to hold its shape its ready to use