I recently found out just how simple it is to make your very own cheese in just a few hours. I probably shouldn't have tried this tonight, as it's currently 4:23 AM and I have to wake up at 9 for work. But hey, I promised my girlfriend something special (and by special, I mean something that I've never tried before, no way to know if it turned out correctly, and no way to know if she'll even like it) for our "date night" tomorrow night.
Enough blabbering about young missies that you'll never have a chance of meeting. On to the good part of this: making home-made Paneer.
"I wanna make my own cheese. WTF do I do?"
Simple, really. Go to the store and buy a jug (make sure you have a big enough pot at home if you're buying a 4L jug) of homo milk (not homosexual milk, silly... unless you live on Davie, that is) which is 3.25% Milk Fat. The more fat there is, the more/better the cheese will be. While you're at the store, grab a bottle of lemon juice (you only need 1/8 cup for 2L milk, or 1/4 cup for 4L milk), or perhaps some white vinegar... or really any kind of liquid with a high amount of acid in it. I read somewhere that the vinegar has better drops than the lemon juice, but the lemon juice gives better XP. I suppose you should also grab a cheese cloth while you're there.
Now that we have our questing items, it's time to craft something.
Pull out the big pot I spoke of earlier and pour ALL the milk into it. Crank the heat to 75% and stir occasionally, making sure to scrape the bottom of the pot. If you don't, the milk fat will stick to the bottom and burn, then you'll get weird orange spots in your cheese... which is what happened to mine.
Now that we have the items gathered, we need to get to the kitchen.
Make sure you have a pot big enough to hold all the milk you're going to use. I thought my pot was plenty big, but it barely held a 2L carton.
First, pour all the milk into the pot and crank the heat to 80%. While it's heating, line a colander or a bowl with some cheese cloth, making sure to leave some draping over the edge so you can fold it up later.
Be sure to stir the milk frequently so it doesn't burn to the bottom. Scraping the bottom helps a lot as well. When it starts to get hot, it'll begin to foam at the top:
When that happens, make sure you have the lemon juice handy. As soon as the milk starts to boil, it'll begin to rise very quickly and you'll notice it curdling as well. Be sure to not let it boil over. Once it starts boiling, remove it from the heat and stir in the lemon juice.
The milk will curdle more rapidly as soon as the acid enters, so stir it around nice and good. Let it sit like that for about 20-30 seconds to make sure it finishes it's job. After it's done sitting for that bit, it'll be time to separate the curds from the whey (which is the left over milk juice after the fat clumps together into curds). To do this, simply pour it all into the colander lined with cheese cloth. It'll look quite sickly, but that is what the cheese is made from.
As you can see, I was careless and let it burn to the bottom of the pot. When I tried scraping it off, it scraped the brown stuff off and that's now sitting in my curds.
After the whey has been drained off, let the curds sit there until it's relatively cool enough to handle with your hands (about 20 minutes or so). When that's ready, roll the cloth up to press out any remaining whey, kinda like wringing out a cloth, so to speak.
I guess I forgot to take a picture of the next step, but it's pretty simple to explain:
Fold the cheese cloth up into a ball shape (or place it all into a mold/press) and then place a heavy weight on top of it. I just filled the pot with water, put a plate on top of the cheese cloth and then put the pot on top of the plate.
Let it sit for about 4 hours (I was playing Battlefield: Bad Company the whole time), then peel back the cloth and VOILA! Your cheese should be ready. It should be slightly crumbly, but with a texture like firm tofu, and kind of spongy.
It has a fridge life of about a week, and there's a couple other interesting points about it:
-> It'll never melt. Pan fry it, deep fry it, broil it, throw it in a flambe... it'll retain it's shape just like tofu.
-> It can be put in the freezer and won't degrade in quality when thawed.
This is also very similar in how Ricotta is made, but we'll tackle that another night.
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