Probably there is no better cheese than cheese made with your own hands. Not a single purchased one can compete with homemade cheese. Plus, this great product is easy to prepare. Well, and how to do it, read this review.
Recipe content:
- Cooking secrets
- Cheese making technology
- Making homemade cheese
- Cheese cooking method
- Video recipes
If once making cheese at home was a fairly common business, today it is a real feat that not all housewives will be able to accomplish. Since the process itself, in principle, is not laborious, but it takes a lot of time. But the result is worth it. The product is obtained with an unmatched taste, without harmful production components and additives. Therefore, we offer you to test your strength and make homemade cheese.
Secrets of making cheese at home
- It is advisable to cook cheese from homemade or farm cottage cheese. In supermarkets, low-quality cottage cheese is often sold, which is more like a cottage cheese product. You can't make good cheese like that.
- Also, to achieve a good result, you need to use high-quality farm milk. It is better not to use sterilized and UHT milk from packs and plastic bags. If you cannot find homemade milk, then buy it in the supermarket, but the fattest and with the shortest shelf life.
- The finished cheese usually contains a lot of fat, so for its preparation, the original product should also be more tender and oily.
- The cheese will ripen only when its mass is at least 500 g.
- Homemade cheeses are generally softer than purchased ones. Its hardness depends on the strong pressure of the press. Therefore, the heavier it is, the harder the cheese will be.
- In the absence of a special form for cheese, you can use a deep fat fryer, a regular colander or a mesh.
- Ready cheese is stored in a cotton towel or in a paper bag in the refrigerator for no more than 7 days.
- The leftover whey can be used for baking pancakes, for yeast dough or for whey-based okroshka.
Cheese making technology at home
Cooking cheese is actually much more real than it seems at first glance. Only hard cheeses require special tools, equipment and ingredients, which are not available in every supermarket. But making soft cheeses on your own is quite easy. There are two technologies for this:
- Melting dairy products.
- Mixing milk with lactic acid bacteria and clotting enzymes.
The first method is widely used at home. It can be used to make soft cheeses. The second method makes hard cheeses, and is rarely used in home cooking. Although, if you wish, you can purchase rennet (acidin-pepsin or pepsin) in pharmacies and in markets where spices are sold.
Interestingly, it is easiest to make cheeses at home, which are not cheap in stores. For example, Mascarpone cheese is used for cheesecake and terramisu, Philadelphia cheese, which is used for rolls and sushi.
Making homemade cheese
Of course, homemade cheese is not cheap, especially when compared to an inexpensive popular product. However, if you are used to buying expensive cheeses, then homemade cheese will come out much cheaper. But the main thing is not the price, but the content of the ingredients and the confidence that the product is not dangerous, especially for children.
- Caloric content per 100 g - 113 kcal.
- Servings - 600 g
- Cooking time - 30 minutes to cook, 3-5 hours to cool
Ingredients:
- Milk - 500 ml
- Cottage cheese - 500 g
- Butter - 50 g
- Soda - 0.5 tsp
- Egg - 1 pc.
- Salt to taste
Preparation:
- In a cooking pot with a thick bottom (so that nothing burns), pour the milk, put the cottage cheese and put it on the stove over low heat. Boil, stirring occasionally, and cook for 15 minutes, stirring thoroughly.
- When you see that whey begins to separate from the milk, throw the mass into a colorant or sieve and leave to drain. Do not discard the serum (use it for a dish).
- Dip butter into the same saucepan. When it melts, beat in an egg, add baking soda and stir.
- Add the curd mass to the saucepan and continue stirring for 5 minutes over low heat.
- When the mass is brewed, transfer it to a special form or any dish and tamp it.
- Cool the future cheese, cover with cling film (so as not to weather) and send it to the refrigerator for 3-5 hours.
Cheese - the classic way of cooking
Natural homemade cheese, firstly, is much healthier for the body, and secondly, it surpasses meat in energy value, because absolutely all the beneficial enzymes and qualities of milk are preserved in it. In addition, natural cheese is rich in minerals and vitamins, as well as protein, which is much better absorbed than milk (by 98-99%).
Ingredients (yield 700 g of pressed cheese):
- Milk - 6 l
- Lemon juice - 2-3 lemons (you can replace 3 tsp citric acid)
- Salt to taste
Preparation:
- Pour milk into a saucepan and boil under a closed lid.
- When the milk begins to rise and boil, remove the saucepan from the stove and add the lemon juice (curdling agent).
- Stir the food for about 1 minute and leave to curd for a couple of minutes. At this time, the spongy paneer will immediately separate from the serum. If the whey is not transparent, put the pan back on the stove, add a little more curdling agent and heat.
- Cover the colander with gauze, strain the resulting mass, and collect the cottage cheese and tie the gauze tight.
- To make the cheese hard, set oppression on top of the mass. The longer the cheese is pressed, the harder the paneer will be.
Video recipes: