Recently I've taken a liking to Indian cuisine and am trying to replicate the curry experience at home. The biggest problem I'm having is with the paneer cheese, which is used in curries I like the most.
When I eat out at an Indian restaurant, their paneer is firm, squishy and kind of 'squeaky' on the teeth. The one I make is always crumbly and falls apart in the curry. I've tried all kinds of recipes from the net; at one point I even asked a friendly Indian chef about it and he told me that they buy the milk directly from a farmer, and that the low-fat, UHT shop variety just won't do.
I tried reinforcing 2% milk with cream before as per the advice of one recipe or other, but not "country-milk" so I got some milk from a friend who keeps cows and the result wasn't much better. The cheese still won't stick together and keeps falling apart, you just can't feel the chewy, curry-flavored bits of paneer at all, so it's pretty useless to even bother with it. Help please?
Best Answer
If you are using UHT milk, that is your answer right there. It won't make proper ricotta or mozzarella, so I'm not surprised it won't make good paneer either. Something about the heat treatment makes it so that it will only produce grainy, tiny curds. I made this mistake myself once, in my excitement to try my new cheesemaking kit. Here is some reference info, including pictures, from cheesemaking.com.