Paneer is a fresh cheese, commonly known in Indian cuisine. It is also called as chhena or chenna and also referred to as cottage cheese, since they have made in India for generations.

Nowdays paneer is one among my favorite ingredients, but before being a blogger, I never like to have paneer, as I have tasted my first paneer in Malaysia, it was very hard to chew, I have concluded that paneer would be hard and skipped paneer, all those days. After long time, I had grilled paneer in a restaurant here in Bangalore, it was delicious and loved the taste, texture and way it’s been cooked. From that it’s being under the must list in my kitchen.

Homemade Paneer / Cottage Cheese

Once in two weeks, I use to prepare something with paneer and so thought of paneer at home. Homemade is too delicious, healthy than the packed ones, you could also substitute flavor to panner while preparing them.

Health Benefits: Paneer is a good source of protein and so they strengthen and prevents from Bones and teeth diseases. It helps in lowering the lower body pain, back and joint pain, helps in weight loss because of the high content of dietary fiber which helps in digestion, helps of diabetics because of the righ source source of omega-3 fatty acid in it, prevents from stone formation in both kidney and gall bladder and prevents kids form mal nutrition and so on.

Shell life of Paneer: Refrigerate paneer in chiller for 8 to 9 days.

Homemade Paneer / Cottage Cheese cubes

Homemade Paneer / Cottage Cheese balls

Ingredients:

• Milk – 1 litre
• Lemon juice or Vinegar – 1 ½ tbsp.
• White cloth or Muslin cloth to strain

Milk getting boiled

With lemon juice

Milk getting curdled

Whey getting separated

Rinsing in tap water

Hunged for few mins

Homemade Paneer / Cottage Cheese

Getting kneaded

Kneaded to a square

Getting chopped into cubes

All done into cubes

Homemade Paneer / Cottage Cheese cubes

Homemade Paneer / Cottage Cheese balls

Preparation:

• Boil the milk on a medium flame.
• Chop the lemon and extract lemon juice, keep it aside.
• Pour in the lemon juice or vinegar, when the milk is well boiled.
• Keep on stirring, now milk starts curdling, allow it to curdle for few seconds and then stop stirring.
• You could see the crud separating from the whey.
• Now set a strainer over the muslin or white cloth and pour it.
• Wash it running water, once the whey is drained.
• Now tie the cloth along with the whey and hang it for almost 30 mins, to drain the whole liquid.
• After that, the paneer would be in round shape.
• Knead it gently with you palm and roll it gently.
• Roll it with the rolling pin and allow it to set few mins (to square).
• Once when it is set cut it to cubes or triangles or roll it to small balls as you desire.

Refrigerate in chiller and use within 7 to 8 days.

Note: Rasgullas can be prepared with this paneer balls. Use full fat or full cream milk for this procedure.

Do check out this link for preparing Rasgulla with step by step pictures: https://madraasi.com/2015/09/27/rasagulla/