We used to always have Happy Farms Cheese Strings in the house for the kids. We live close to the US border so we could make a trip over and get a couple of packs.
I decided to try to make some homemade deep fried cheese.
I started by opening the cheese sticks.
(Click on the images for higher resolution.)
Next, I cut them into thirds.
I make up three containers. One with flour, salt, pepper, and a pinch of cayenne, one with a couple of eggs, scrambled, and one with panko crumbs.
Each cheese stick gets flour, then egg, then panko before being arranged on a baking pan ready to be deep fried.
Mine kind of exploded. That just means that I get to clean them up for presentation by picking off the exploded cheese and eating it.
When they come out of the oil taste one and salt them if necessary.
You can reduce the explosions by sticking them in the freezer and freezing them then dropping them into the oil frozen to get the outside fried up before the cheese melts enough to ooze out.
Or...just eat the damned cheese.
The sauce can be anything. You can use jarred marinara or you can stick blend jarred spaghetti sauce then boil it down to reduce it. I used homemade spaghetti sauce that my wife froze last summer which I boiled down to the consistence you see in the photo.
How do you think panela would fry up with breading? It isn't stringy like mozzarella. I've fried it by itself as a meat substitute for tacos, but never with a breading.