Home made Paneer/ Cottage Cheese

I always purchase paneer from Indian grocery and was very comfortable buying it until recently, but the last purchase was not good in the sense that it had some pieces of plastic in it. I did not make it home because it was too much of effort to prepare it.
I stopped buying it from the Indian grocery and made it at home today when I decided to prepare palak paneer.

Here is the procedure:

Ingredients

1 Litre Milk (I used 2%)
3 Tbsp Lemon Juice

Method

Boil the milk in the pan.

Heat the milk and keep stirring the milk so that it does not catch the bottom of the pan and burn. If the milk gets burnt then the paneer would smell and it is difficult to eat the paneer.

When the milk comes to a boil, pour the lemon juice into the boiling milk.

Reduce the heat and stir continuously until the milk is completely curdled.

Remove from the heat when the separation of the curds and yellowish whey is complete.

Never over curdle the milk as you will get a hard paneer after it is set.Do not over cook.

Strain the mixture through a clean muslin cloth.

Hold it under running water for a minute and then press out the excess water.

Hang the muslin for 15-20 minutes so that all the whey is drained out.

To make the paneer into a block tie the muslin and place it under something heavy.

The paneer can now be cut into chunks and used as required.