Culinary Adventures: Making Paneer

It's no secret that while I was in Scotland, I ate a lot of Nepalese food. One of my favorite foods was motor/matar paneer from the Gurkha Kitchen. Since Nepalese cuisine isn't widely available in the United States, I decided to look into preparing it myself. It turns out that one of the ingredients, paneer, is actually pretty easy to make. Paneer is a sort of Indian/Nepalese cottage cheese, and it's the base for many dishes. So, I did what any good denizen of the Internet would do: I looked up the recipe, and then found a video on YouTube.


So, I decided to try to make it. The first recipe I saw called for either lemon or lime juice, so I went with lime juice. With a quarter cup of lime juice and a half gallon of what I think was whole milk. The entire process took about an hour, half of which was just letting the paneer cool down. I also used only half of my cheese cloth, so I can make some more. Truth be told, the stuff doesn't taste fantastic, but I don't think it's supposed to since it's meant to be used as an element in other recipes. I haven't looked for a motor paneer recipe yet, and if it's too involved, I may just shortcut the whole process with a jar of marinara sauce and a can of peas.

So... Achievement unlocked: make paneer.