Farmer cheese

Also called paneer or curd cheese, farmer cheese is an easy introduction to cheese making, or a quick addition to a meal. It can go from milk to cheese to table in less than three hours, or faster if you’re really in a rush!

This is my favorite cheese to substitute for cream cheese in cheesecake and red velvet cake frosting recipes, as it whizzes up super soft in the food processor – as a side note, if you plan to do this, reserve a little of the whey that drains in case you need to add a little more liquid to make the cheese smooth.

Start with a gallon (or more) of fresh milk. My preference is to use fresh raw goat milk, filtered and chilled. Pour your milk into a nice big stock pot, and slowly heat it almost to boiling point. As it starts to bubble, pour in 1/2 cup vinegar for every gallon of milk you use, stirring constantly. I like to use the Bragg’s Organic Raw Unfiltered Apple Cider Vinegar with the ‘mother’.

The milk will almost immediately start to curdle, which is to say separate into curds and whey. Remove it from the heat and continue to stir gently.

Next, I line a large sieve with cheesecloth and spoon the curds into it with a big slotted spoon. The whey drains through – save it for softening the cheese in the food processor (just in case you drain it a little too much!) or for feeding to your dogs and chickens. They will love you for it!

Tie up the corners of the cheesecloth and hang the cheese to drain. If you want this cheese for a harder cheese, for example for on crackers or rolling in cracked pepper or chopped herbs as appetizers (yum!) then massage around 1tbsp cheese salt per gallon of milk used into the curds. This will help to draw out even more moisture as the cheese drains.

To turn it into whipped cream cheese for cheesecake or frosting, whizz it in the food processor until perfectly smooth.

Alternatively, roll the cheese in the topping of your choice – cracked black pepper, chopped herbs, caraway seeds – and serve on crackers. In Indian cooking, paneer is served fried, and also crumbled into korma.

Katy Light
Katy runs a small dairy farm in North Georgia, with a handful of Nigerian Dwarfs for milk and show. Find her blog at www.poppycreekfarm.com
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