Description and photos of Chanakh cheese, how it is made in dairies, the nuances of home cooking. Calorie content, composition, benefits and harms to the body. Using the variety in cooking, recipes with Chanakh cheese.
Chanakh is a pickled cheese of the national cuisine of the peoples of the Caucasus (Armenia and Georgia), ripening in vats, from which it got its name. The aroma is spicy, sharp; taste - spicy-salty, with a slight sourness, bitterness is allowed, which does not remain as an aftertaste; texture - dense, slightly brittle, on the cut there are many eyes of different sizes, irregular shapes - round, oval, multifaceted; color - from milky white to slightly yellow. There is no crust, cracks on the surface are possible. The shape of the head is a truncated cone with a height of 17-20 cm and a diameter of 20-25 cm, weight - from 4 to 7 kg.
How is Chanakh cheese made?
At dairies, when preparing raw materials, 2 fractions are mixed - skim and whole cow's milk, poured into a separator and, if acidity is insufficient, a mesophilic gas-forming starter culture prepared on pure cultures is added.
Coagulation takes place in baths. Add rennet and mix. Calcium chloride is added when assessing the quality of the feedstock: if the clot forms quickly and the loss of nutrients (in particular calcium) does not occur, they do without it.
At this stage, Chanakh cheese is made, like other Caucasian varieties - Kobin or Ossetian. Curd temperature - 32-35 ° С, process duration - about half an hour. The size of the cheese grains is 1-1.5 cm, the duration of setting (settling to separate the whey) is up to 10 minutes. During kneading for 20 minutes, slowly heating to 36-38 ° C is carried out. The whey is drained, the curd mass is dried for 25 minutes, replaced with 30% hot water and kneading is carried out again. The cheese grain should not stick together, otherwise the eyes will not form.
The whey is again drained so that it only reaches the surface, the intermediate raw materials are defended for up to half an hour and laid out on a drainage table. The layers are shifted several times on top of each other - the liquid is separated due to self-pressing.
To obtain conical heads, the curd mass is transferred into bags, the upper part is twisted, squeezing out the whey, and then transferred into a conical shape. While the heads are forming, they are turned over several times. Microclimate in the pressing room: temperature - 15-16 ° С, humidity - 95-97%. The duration of the process is 62 hours in summer and 82 in winter.
Further, the preparation of Chanakh cheese is carried out according to a special algorithm. Salting takes place in several stages. 1 day - with dry salt, another 2 weeks - in brine at 12 ° C with a concentration of 13-15%, and then the concentration is increased to 18%. The duration of fermentation in brine is at least 2 months. To improve the taste, grape wines are added as additional additives. The quality of salting is controlled all the time of production. An increase or decrease in concentration is possible.
Ripe heads are dried for 1-2 days at room temperature and placed in a chamber with a temperature of 10-12 ° C and a humidity of 80-85%.
Chanakh cheese is made at home, as in production, but with some nuances
- Sheep or goat's milk, as well as a mixture with cow's milk, is more often used as a raw material. If possible, preference should be given to the milk yield of the sheep.
- Milk is collected in advance so that it reaches the desired consistency, that is, sour.
- The cutting of cheese grains is carried out not with a lyre, but with an ordinary knife with a thin blade, first in a horizontal plane, and then in a vertical one.
- Knead not with a stirrer blade or "paddle", but with a wooden spatula.
The cooking mode (duration of the processes, temperature of whey and brine), as well as the microclimate in the room, correspond to the factory one.
Each family has its own secrets of how to give the finished product a special taste. Fruit syrups, natural honey, homemade white wines are added to the brine, because reds have coloring properties, various spices.
Homemade cheese is stored in vats in a cool place and is very rarely dried and transferred to the shelves of the cellar. Before using it, take it out and wash it. It is advisable to eat the whole batch within 2 months.
