Paneer Bhurji – Fresh Indian Cheese with Tomatoes

An easy and Ayurvedic way of preparing fresh Paneer and then Paneer Burji - Indian cheese with Tomatoes

Ingredients

1 Liter of Milk

1 Lemon

1 Medium-sized Tomato, cut in small pieces

1 Tbsp Ghee

1 ½ Tsp Cumin

½ Bay leaf

¾ Tsp Garam Masala

¾ Tsp Coriander

1 Pinch Mace

1 Pinch Nutmeg 

¼ Tsp Cinnamon 

1 Tsp Turmeric

2 Tsp Fresh Ginger in small Cubes

Salt according to taste

This will not give much paneer, about 200 gram which is maybe a handful, so if you plan to cook for many, please increase the amount.

How to prepare fresh Indian Cheese with Tomatoes in an Ayurvedic Way

Place a pot on your stove and put it on high heat. Give three or four tablespoons of water into the pot and on top of it the milk. Let the milk heat up now while you squeeze the juice out of the lemon. The water will help keeping the milk from burning to the bottom of your pot but you should still stir it from time to time to really avoid it.

For the next step it is important that you act in exactly the right moment. Watch the milk until it starts coming up in the pot. This is your moment! Let it come up a bit and then slowly pour the lemon juice into the milk before it flows out onto your stove. You will see the milk go down again and flocculate. Start stirring slowly and let boil up again until you see the cheese separated from the rest, which then looks like water. 

Take a very fine sieve or a clean and fine dish towel on top of a sieve and pour the water through it so that only the cheese remains in the sieve or dish towel. You can keep the whey and drink it if you wish as it is very healthy, too. If you are planning to make chapati, too, use this water to prepare the dough. It will make extra-soft chapatti!

And there you are: freshly made Paneer. This cheese is used in many different ways. You can eat it as you have it now with sauce or fry it in a pan with spices. You can also let the water drip out or press it out of the cheese, make it more firm and then cut it in pieces for further use.

Today we will make an easy tomato tadka for the cheese and for this you only need to keep the cheese in the sieve so that the water can drip out.

Heat up a pan and when it is warm, add the ghee. As soon as the ghee is hot, turn the heat down and add cumin, the bay leaf, garam masala, coriander, mace, nutmeg, cinnamon, turmeric and finally the ginger. Keep on stirring the spices and don’t let them burn. They should develop a nice aroma and finally you add the tomatoes in the pan. Keep on stirring until the tomatoes are cooked and soft. If you wish, you can keep some pieces of tomatoes, otherwise you can mash them with your cooking spoon so that you have a nice puree.

The last step is to add the paneer and salt into the pan and stir it until everything is nicely mixed and warm. You can choose yourself, how liquid or hard you wish the dish to be. You can serve it right away which will make it more liquid or fry the mixture a bit longer.

In any way, it is a delicious dish that everybody enjoys!

Ayurvedic and Nutritional Values

Paneer, as a dairy product, is a rich source both of proteins and of calcium and is thus good for your bones and joints. Paneer helps to prevent stomach disorders and reduces pitta in the body.

The tomatoes that we mixed into the dish make this dish even more delicious. They are known as appetizers, helping people with low appetite and weakness to eat. They are given to people who suffer from fever, jaundice and piles. Additionally they prevent constipation. From an Ayurvedic point of view tomatoes are in general rich in all three humours but have a good effect on people with excessive vata and kapha.

So altogether with the paneer, the tomatoes and all the spices we used, we again have a balancing Ayurvedic dish that looks good and tastes even better!