Making fresh Ghee, Khoa & Paneer from Malai

Did you know its very easy to make Ghee (clarified butter) from the malai that we skim off from the milk daily??

Did you know you can make ghee, khoa and paneer from that one malai and even rasgullas can be made from the paneer obtained in this process??

Are you working and do not have time to make ghee frequently or you get less malai on milk and so cannot store it for too long until you collect sufficient malai to make ghee??

Don’t worry, here’s the solution on how to store the malai and make ghee out of it without using curd and not just malai, get paneer and khoa as a by-product of ghee making. So, it’s very simple to obtain thick malai from milk & store it to make all these things. The process is:

“Boil the milk (I use cow milk) on low flame. Once it gets boiled, just let it cool on room temperature. Once, the milk comes to room temperature, pop it in inside refrigerator for 5-6 hours. If you don’t refrigerate the milk, the layer of malai will still be thin. Then, skim off this malai and store in an air-tight container in freezer compartment of your refrigerator. Do this activity daily until you have sufficient malai to make ghee. Malai lasts easily for around 30 days in freezer. Try to make ghee out of it every 15-20 days but 30 days is max time! And yes, since malai has been deep freezed for days, it is really hard. So, on the day when you want to make ghee out of it, keep it out at room temperature for around 2-3 hours or until its soft enough to be blended.”

Since, malai is older than a week, we are not going to store the butter that we obtain in this process but the ghee made out of this malai is good enough as it gets thoroughly boiled. Use the butter, if you are making malai within a week’s time.

The butter that we obtain is used to make clarified butter and Khoa. The buttermilk that we obtain in the process is what we are going to use to make paneer aka cottage cheese. SO, it will be our special “Buttermilk Paneer” .

Watch the video for a quicker guide to make this recipe with clear voice instructions and process or continue reading for those who like to read the recipe!!

 

Here’s the written recipe for those who like to read 🙂

Dish Type : Generic

Cooking Time : 30 minutes

Ingredients:

1. Malai – approx 500 gms
2. Non fruit vinegar or lime juice – 2 tbsp and
3. Hot Water – 1/4th cup
4. Cold water – 2-3 tbsp (if required)

Process:

1. Take malai in a heavy bottom kadhai or pan, in the same utensil in which you want to make ghee.
2. Blend this malai using a hand blender (star blade), or you can use a hand whisk (but it’s just too much of hard work in using hand whisk).
3. While blending, if you feel the malai is too tight, then add little cold water. If malai is loose enough, then don’t add water!
4. Blend until the butter and buttermilk separates as shown in the image below:
5. After blending, cleaning the blade of blender is a task. But you can easily clean it using hot water. So, in hot water, leave the blade for  10 seconds and its done!! Keep this water aside, we’ll use it later.
6. Now, please dirty your hands and collect all the butter on one side while squeezing out all buttermilk from it and pour this buttermilk in another pan.
7. Keep aside buttermilk, we’ll use it in sometime. For now, put this kadhai having butter on low flame on gas and keep stirring the butter as it boils. Boil the butter until ghee and khova separates, just like this .. Can you see that white thing curdling? That’s nothing but Khova. Turn off stove as it starts to settle down at the bottom of the Kadhai. Let this cool for 5 minutes before pouring it into storage container. (TIP: Always remember, as you make ghee, always stir the ghee till the bottom of the pan i.e. the stirring spoon should always touch the bottom of the pan otherwise you will not know when the ghee will burn and stick to bottom of the pan and your khova will not turn out to be good. Even if, in case, your khova turns brown, you can always add a tsp of sugar to it and just have it like a sweet. That also tastes yum!! 😉 )
8. After 5 minutes, using a strainer, pour this ghee into a steel or glass storage container. As you strain, all the khova will get collected in strainer. 
9. Using back of a spoon, press the khova in strainer and  squeeze out excess ghee from khova.
10. Then take out khova in a separate bowl and ghee is also ready in our container. Close container lid only after ghee has cooled down completely.
    

    
11.  Now, let’s make paneer from buttermilk. For this, boil the buttermilk.
12. After one boil, turn off the stove and let it cool down a bit for 5 minutes.
13. Remember the water we kept after cleaning the blender’s blade? In that water, add vinegar or lime juice (whatever you are using) and mix.
14. Now, slowly add this diluted vinegar or lime juice in buttermilk, little by little, along with stirring the buttermilk. You will see that the buttermilk starts to curdle and whey is separated from paneer.
15. Strain this in a muslin cloth and squeeze out all the excess water from the paneer. Store this whey water in a container.
16. You will be left with paneer in muslin cloth. Rinse this paneer in fresh water one more time to remove the smell & taste of vinegar or lemon. Squeeze out all excess water and keep it for around 10-15 minutes.
    

    
17. After 15 minutes, take paneer out of muslin cloth and use as you want.

How to serve:

1. Clarified butter or ghee can be used to put in rice or in place of oil in making curries or can be spread all over chapatis.
2. Khoa or Khova or Khoya can be used to make any Khova based gravy or curry like Khova matar or Khova paneer etc.
3. Buttermilk Paneer can be used for making “Paneer paratha“, “spongy white rasgulla” (will tell you soon how to make them using this paneer) or any other Paneer curry of your choice!!
4. Whey water can be used in gravies in place of normal water and also to knead dough.