Savoury Starters – Paneer Patties

Paneer Patties, Paneer Burgers

If you haven’t tasted paneer patties before, you absolutely should try them out. They could be enjoyed on their own as savoury starters. But put them in sandwiches or burgers, and you’ll have something exceedingly satisfying and tasty to munch into.

And they’re not complicated or difficult to make at all. Read on and then watch the video to learn how to make paneer patties from scratch, beginning with a brief tutorial on how to make paneer – Indian cottage cheese.

Ingredients

For the patties

Approx. 330 g crumbled paneer

(From 1 ½ litres milk)

2 medium-size potatoes

1 cup finely chopped onion

3 finely chopped green chillies

1 ½ tbsp chopped/grated ginger

Chopped coriander

1 tsp garam masala

1/2 tsp cumin powder

2 ½ slices stale bread or 3 tbsp corn flour

Juice of ½ to 1 sour lime

1 tsp sugar

Salt to taste

To make paneer

1 ½ litre milk

Approx. 3 tbsp lime juice

For paneer burgers

2 burger buns

Onion, tomato slices

Shredded cabbage

Butter, mayonnaise, hot pasta sauce

Procedure

Let’s begin by preparing the paneer.

1. Mix the lime juice with ½ cup water.
2. Bring the milk to a boil. Just as it starts boiling, lower the heat and add the diluted lime juice, 2 tablespoons at a time, and keep stirring the milk till it splits completely and the whey is clear and straw-coloured. Turn off the heat.
3. Spread a clean muslin cloth or thin napkin across a sieve set over a clean vessel. Separate the paneer from the whey by pouring the split milk through the muslin cloth. The cloth will hold back the paneer, while the whey will collect in the vessel below.
4. At this stage, you would normally rinse the paneer three or four times with water to get rid of the sour taste of the lime juice. But since we’ll be adding lime juice to the patties mix later on, we can skip this step.
5. Gather the ends of the muslin cloth together and squeeze out as much whey as possible from the collected paneer.
6. Tie or twist the ends of the muslin cloth around the lump of paneer and place something heavy on it, for example a flat plate with two or three heavy books placed on it, to squeeze out some more of the whey and also press the paneer into a slab.
7. After an hour take the slab of paneer out of the muslin cloth and crumble it.

Now let’s start preparing the paneer patties.

1. Finely chop around 2 medium-size onions. (This will make around a cup of chopped onions.)
2. Finely chop the green chillies and coriander as well.
3. Boil, peel and mash the potatoes.
4. Soak the stale bread slices in a little water for around 5 minutes. Then squeeze the water out of them. The potatoes and the bread will help hold the other ingredients together. Instead of bread slices, you could use around 3 tbsp of corn flour.
5. Sauté the chillies, in 2 tbsp oil. Then throw in the chopped onions and sauté these too till they’re soft.
6. Next, one by one, mix in the grated ginger, garam masala, mashed potatoes, and crumbled paneer. Mix everything well.
7. Season the mix with sugar, salt, lime juice, garam masala. Adjust the taste by adding more of these ingredients, if necessary. Turn off the heat and let the mix cool down completely.
8. Shape the mix into patties of any shape or size of your choice. Roll them in semolina or rice flour.
9. Fry the patties in a little oil on medium heat till they’re a rich brown on each side.

Assembling a burger

1. Heat 1 tsp oil in a pan and caramelise a few onion rings on medium heat.
2. Lightly butter each half of a burger bun. Drizzle a little oil in a non-stick pan and toast these lightly on both sides. Take them off the pan and let them cool for a few seconds.
3. Spread mayonnaise on the lower half of the burger bun and press a thin layer of shredded cabbage on this. Place a patty over the shredded cabbage. Layer the patty with tomato slices and onion rings.
4. Spread hot pasta sauce or any sauce of your choice on the upper half of each bun and press some shredded cabbage on this too. Upturn the upper half of the bun over the burger.

Enjoy!