How to make Chenna/Paneer

Introduction:

Paneer/Chenna is mostly used in all party vegetables and sweets. We can easily get the paneer in market but chenna(which is used for traditional bengali sweets) is not readily available. Above all, it's my personal advice t use homemade paneer for all your cooking. These days readymade paneer may not  be of god quality. I'm telling yu the recipe to make chenna/Paneer at home. Chenna can be used for all the traditional bengali sweets.

Ingredients:

Full cream milk:  500 gm

Lemon juice/Vinegar: 1 tsp

Chilled water/ice cubes: 8-10

Cooking time: 10 mins

Method:

Boil the milk. After one boil, add lemon juice to it and stirr it. You will see that milk will start to curdle. Let it happen in the same way for 5-7 min on medium flame. When all the milk will get curdled, yu will see that it will separate out. You can see that milk is splited into water and chenna. Now put off the flame.Add ice cubes/ chilled water. This will help to stop the reaction and lessen the taste of lemon.

Now take a muslin cloth. Strain the whole mixture through it. The chenna will remain in the cloth. Squeeze out all the excess water out of it. The remain in the cloth is the "Chenna" which can be used for sweets like rasmalai, rasgulla and sandesh.

If you want to make paneer, then tightly tie the muslin cloth and put the mixture against some hard structure. I use "Stone chakla" to press the paneer. Within one hour it will get tightened. Then you can freeze it or use it for any paneer dish. This recipe will make approximately 200 gm of paneer.

TIPS:

1. If you want to make low fat paneer, then use skimmed milk instead of full cream milk.

2. Do not add much lemon juice. Otherwise you will get the taste of lemon in paneer.