There are two kinds of disappointment in the kitchen. One is when you know your subpar dinner is your own fault, and had you taken just a little more care you wouldn’t be choking down such an unsatisfying meal. The other is when the problem lies with subpar ingredients that fail to be what you know they could and should. I have experienced this at times with store-bought paneer, a convenience product that too often cooks up hard and rubbery. It’s especially jarring if you’ve ever eaten good quality, freshly made paneer and know just how wonderfully milky and light it can be.
But does that mean we have to either accept chewy nubs of refrigerator-aisle cheese or make paneer from scratch? Is there nothing we can do to transform store-bought paneer back to a better version of itself? You know the answer is that we can. But before I tell you how, let’s find out why this happens in the first place.
The Science of Rubbery Paneer
Paneer is a fresh cheese made not with rennet but by acidifying milk with a sour ingredient like lemon or lime juice. The result is essentially a casein-whey protein complex with fat, moisture, lactose, and minerals trapped inside. In India, buffalo milk is traditionally used to make paneer (similar to traditional Italian mozzarella), and the resulting paneer is softer, spongier and more porous than paneer made from cow’s milk. That’s because buffalo milk has almost double the fat of cow’s milk (7-8% vs 3-4%, respectively), and fat matters.
When the milk is coagulated using the sour agent, it causes proteins in the milk to bond. But fat can interfere with the strength of those bonds, and the more fat there is, the less strongly the proteins bond. In practice, what that means is higher fat equals softer mouthfeel. In the US, buffalo milk is not widely available.
Right away we have our first and biggest problem. Because the majority of the paneer sold in retail stores in the United States uses cow’s milk, the resulting paneer does not have that same soft, rich texture. If you are able to find paneer that states “100% buffalo milk” on its packaging, it is going to be a much better quality than other normal supermarket brands. In addition to the fat content of the paneer, other factors can also influence the texture of the resultant paneer. When paneer is made, it is pressed to expel excess liquid, but the temperature at which the curds are compressed, the pressure applied, and the time allotted for pressing the paneer can all contribute to an even drier, firmer paneer. These are not factors the consumer has control over, but that doesn’t mean we can’t do something to make it better.
How to Soften Store-Bought Paneer
The first thing you’ll want to determine is whether your paneer needs to be soaked at all. Generally speaking, any store-bought paneer made from cow’s milk will benefit from being soaked, but even some store-bought buffalo milk paneer can use some softening. One easy way to tell is if the paneer offers noticeable resistance when cut or bitten; if it does, consider soaking it.
Many people say that the best way to do this is by soaking it in warm water before adding it to a dish, the idea being that the paneer will absorb water and soften as a consequence. But does this work—does the paneer actually absorb water? To find out, I experimented by soaking different packets of store-bought paneer in cool water, hot water, and for different intervals of time from 15 minutes up to overnight in the refrigerator, and then documented the changes in their weight to see if they absorbed water, and if so, how much.
Overall, I measured only about a 2% increase in the weight of the paneer after a full hour of soaking. If left overnight, I recorded at most a 4% increase in mass—an improvement, but not a remarkable one.
In a couple of instances, the weight actually dropped by one gram. I was surprised by this, and have concluded that it’s either the result of a weighing error due to the resolution of my scale, or syneresis (the water released by cheese) when there is a change in temperature. Submerging the paneer in hot water, I should note, did make the paneer feel more flexible compared to the cold, refrigerated version; however, here again, the increase in moisture content was minimal.
Soaking paneer overnight in the refrigerator resulted in a 4% increase in moisture content, which did deliver a desired softening effect—a clear improvement. But having to soak paneer overnight to get any benefit isn’t what we want, since it’s not practical. Paneer recipes, especially ones you’re planning to make with store-bought paneer, should usually be on the quick and easy side, so having to plan a day in advance just to make dinner isn’t going to help all that much.
So, why doesn’t the soaking method work well on plain paneer? It has to do with the structure of the paneer: The less porous the cheese is, the less space there is for the water to diffuse into. And as we learned above, cow’s milk has less fat than buffalo milk and therefore a more tightly bonded protein structure.
Unfortunately, what this means is that the very cheeses that are most in need of a softening treatment are the tight, rubbery ones that are least able to absorb water and soften. Therefore, if the paneer feels hard and rubbery initially, it is unlikely to absorb much water, even after soaking overnight, and thus won’t soften significantly.
Unlocking the Secret to Softer Paneer: Frying
At this point it may sound like we’re stuck: Paneer needs more voids inside it to absorb water and soften, but the paneer most in need of this treatment is the least able to benefit from it. But guess what—there’s a way to create spaces inside paneer, and it happens to also be a method that improves the paneer’s flavor!
By frying paneer, the exterior develops a beautiful brown crust (thanks to the wonderful Maillard reaction), leading not only to crisping on the surface but also more complex flavor. (Be careful when frying paneer, it can sometimes cause a lot of spluttering if the oil is too hot. Maintain the oil between 350 and 400°F [180-200°C], not higher. Also note, you can save oil by shallow frying instead of deep frying, though your will likely be not as good.)
What’s even more of interest to us, though is what’s happening inside the paneer when we fry it. Since oil frying temperatures are much higher than water’s boiling point of 212°F (100°C), the water in the paneer boils as soon as it’s submerged in the oil. As the water inside begins to boil and turn to steam, the steam travels outwards, exiting the paneer in the form of bubbles that leave tiny craters behind. The immediate consequence of this is even further moisture loss (about 15% of the paneer’s weight), and even tighter and more rubbery nubbins of cheese.
Here’s the fun part! After frying, if you dunk this steam-ravaged paneer in water, it quickly absorbs the surrounding water, not only replacing the water that was lost, but filling all those little craters left behind by the fleeing steam bubbles.
You can see this play out in the numbers above: If you add fried paneer to water, it rapidly absorbs water and rebounds back to its original weight within 10 minutes. That’s nearly a 15% rapid increase in water absorption just from the voids left behind by departing steam. Within 30 minutes, there is, on average, a further 4% increase in water weight compared to the original—that’s the same amount of moisture gained as the overnight soaking method, but in a fraction the time.
Soaking fried paneer is not only tasty due to the browning, but it also has a fantastic texture. This hack, recommended by many Indian chefs, is particularly effective in recipes where fried paneer is added to sauces such as matar paneer and palak paneer. (Not all paneer dishes benefit from fried paneer. If you need to grate paneer for paneer burji or a paratha stuffing, you should use fresh paneer as-is.) But for those recipes where fried paneer is a welcome addition, just soak it in water for 30 minutes after frying before adding it to your sauce. It works!