Production of Turosh cheese, nutritional value and chemical composition. Useful properties and contraindications for use. Cooking use, recipes, interesting facts.
Turosh is a Croatian cheese made in the northern part of the country, in Meimurje. It is difficult to characterize which group this variety belongs to: it is eaten both completely fresh and dried, made from both fatty whole milk and pasteurized cow milk. The taste also changes: from creamy curd, spicy, with sourness to spicy. The texture also depends on the degree of drying: it can be soft and crumbly, brittle, dry; and the color is ocher or light orange. The shape of the fermented milk product is a cone with a height of up to 6 cm, a diameter of 5, 7 cm and a weight of 80-150 g. It can be sold under the name Toros.
How is Turosh cheese made?
The initial raw material for the manufacture of the product is cow's milk, and the production begins with pasteurization. This process was often neglected in farms, but now products made from raw milk are not allowed to be sold.
Turosh cheese is prepared as granular cottage cheese, without using starter cultures for sourdough and curdling. Pre-pasteurized milk is naturally acidified. To do this, it is poured into a clay jar (you can use a glass jar) and put in a warm place, tightly closed so that mold fungi or other fungal cultures do not get into. The raw material is defatted by removing the separated cream from the surface. Then the jar is left for some time. Readiness is checked empirically, to taste.
Sour skim milk is heated in a water bath to 42 ° C and stirred. This process is long and takes about 3 hours. The separated cottage cheese is allowed to sink, crushed into small pieces with a stirrer, and allowed to settle again. Calcium chloride is poured in as a preservative - such an additive allows you to increase the density of the curd grains.
When making Turosh cheese, kale is often neglected. But some cheese makers break it with a hand mill, which resembles a submersible blender. As soon as the layer rises to the surface and becomes dense, it is thrown back onto cheesecloth folded in several layers, or cheese cloth. Complete separation of whey takes 24 hours, during this time the fabric is changed 1-2 times, and the curd mass is turned over.
The drained intermediate is mixed with salt and paprika and cones are formed. Proportions of ingredients: 1 kg of curd mass, 20 g of coarse sea salt and 10 g of red pepper. It is necessary to make significant physical efforts so that the pulp becomes dense and the grains do not crumble. Some cheese makers add dried herbs and chopped garlic to salt and pepper.
Leave to dry at room temperature for a day, and then expose to dry in the sun or in an oven preheated to 60-80 ° C. The lid is not closed. The duration of aging is a week. To flavor and accelerate ripening, the bright cones are fumigated with the smoke of meadow grasses.
Fermentation does not take place in a cool place, but when heated. The purpose of this process is not to transform milk protein, but, on the contrary, to stop possible acidification and fermentation processes. Salt and paprika are reliable preservatives and protect the fermented milk product from the introduction of pathogenic microorganisms. No crust is formed during maturation. From 10 liters of milk, only 1.85 kg of cheese is obtained.
