Homemade cottage cheese is considered many times better than the store counterpart, since it does not contain additives in the form of preservatives and stabilizers. Content:
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Cooking curd
- Classic recipe
- How to do it quickly
- The subtleties of cooking
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Types of cottage cheese
- What happens
- From milk
- From kefir
- Skim cheese
- Granular curd
- Curd cheese
Cottage cheese is a perfect food product that combines all the useful properties of dairy products. High-quality cottage cheese provides the body with easily digestible protein, fats, vitamins, amino acids and minerals (calcium, potassium, phosphorus). It is useful for pregnant and lactating women, for young growing organisms, people with increased physical activity and the elderly.
Features of making cottage cheese
The modern way of making cottage cheese at home, which cannot be said about the industry, has absolutely not undergone any changes and is no different from the process that our ancestors used. Still, this nutritious fermented milk product is obtained from well-heated sour milk (sour milk), placed in a linen bag to separate the dense part (cottage cheese) from the liquid (whey).
Classic cottage cheese recipe at home
There is an ideal "long-term recipe" when the extraction of a valuable product goes on its own, without your direct intervention. The whole process is simple, and you can get cottage cheese from milk on the second or third day after its natural fermentation, when, under the influence of temperature factors, the whey is separated from the curdled milk due to the action of live lactic acid bacteria.
To get 1 kg of cottage cheese, cook:
- 3 liters of fresh, preferably homemade, milk;
- 2 capacious containers: one larger, the other smaller;
- colander;
- clean x / paper cloth or thick gauze.
Instructions for making cottage cheese at home:
- Pour the milk into a resealable container, do not disturb it, leave it to sour for a couple of days (the rate of fermentation will depend on temperature factors).
- After the container with the fermented, already dense, mixture, put on low heat in a water bath. Cook, stirring gently, for 15-20 minutes until curd clots form.
- As soon as the slightly heated mass separates into cottage cheese and whey, set it aside until it cools completely.
- Next, prepare a roomy dish, place a colander on it, cover it with a thick clean cotton cloth (a sieve is not suitable for such manipulation).
- Pour the mixture onto the prepared cloth, tie it in a knot and hang it over the prepared container so that the separated serum can drain into it. As soon as the whey stops dripping, the curd is ready.
How to make curd quickly
If you don't have 2-3 days of time, try making “instant” cottage cheese, where you can play with the final taste of the product and its characteristics. You will get a firm consistency of cottage cheese when the curdled milk flows for a day, soft tender cottage cheese is prepared almost immediately - by the usual mechanical squeezing of the whey by hand. The fat content and the amount of the product at the exit will depend on the percentage of fat content of the original components.
To get 200 g of cottage cheese, you need the following ingredients:
- 500 ml of milk;
- 500 ml of kefir.
The cooking process looks like this:
- Pour the milk into a bowl of sufficient capacity (at least 1.5 liters) and bring it to a boil.
- As soon as the moment comes for the milk to boil, reduce the strength of the fire and immediately start pouring kefir into the boiling liquid in a thin stream.
- Then add a little heat and begin to slowly stir the mass.
- When the coagulation process begins (separating the whey from the protein), turn off the heat, cover the dishes with a lid and leave the mixture alone for a while (the rolling process will still take place in the cooling billet).
- Then do everything as usual: throw the cooled mass onto a thick gauze and, tying it in a knot, hang it to drain the serum.
The subtleties of making cottage cheese at home
You can make cottage cheese at home both from homemade whole milk and from pasteurized store milk. A product made from country cow milk will be more fatty, tender in taste and cheaper in cost. Cottage cheese from milk from the counter will turn out to be more fat-free, light, fine-grained, less tender and twice as expensive.
Whatever milk you choose initially for making cottage cheese, there are certain nuances, without knowing which you can get a low-quality product:
- Souring milk should be natural, without your intervention and in no case in the refrigerator.
- During the warming up of already sour milk, the main thing is not to overheat it, since with excessive temperature exposure to the curdled milk, the cottage cheese will turn out to be fine-grained, and its taste will be hard and dry.
- If, on the contrary, you do not bring the semi-finished product to the desired temperature while heating it in a water bath, you will get a rubber mass at the exit, which tastes completely different from cottage cheese.
- The green color of the whey, which appears when sour milk is heated, indicates that the yogurt has matured enough.
It is worth considering that the final mass of the prepared product will also differ: the yield of cottage cheese from three liters of homemade milk will be much larger (about 1 kg) than from the same amount of store milk (600-700 g).
Types of cottage cheese
Like the rest of fermented milk products, according to the production technology, it is customary to classify cottage cheese. With this product, they do it according to the cooking method (separate and traditional) and according to the fat content.
What is cottage cheese
By fat content, cottage cheese is divided into:
- fat-free (% fat up to 1, 8);
- low fat (less than 3% fat);
- bold (9%);
- classic (from 4-18%);
- fatty (% fat content not less than 18).
The traditional way of making cottage cheese is acidic (prepared on the basis of skim milk using sourdough) and acid-rennet (pasteurized milk is used, in which case the sourdough is supplemented with the enzyme pepsin).
With the separate method, grain skimmed cottage cheese is obtained, which is prepared from skimmed skim milk. In this way, when adding cream, you can get cottage cheese of any fat content.
Making cottage cheese from milk
At home, all the specifics and technology of making cottage cheese from milk is of the same type and is simple. Milk is pasteurized, cooled and seasoned with sourdough (kefir, sour cream, yogurt, fermented baked milk). Standard proportions: 3-4 tablespoons of sourdough is used for 1 liter of milk.
The prepared mixture is stirred and placed in a warm place for 8-10 hours. After that, the curd curd is separated from the whey. Ready cottage cheese can be flavored with sour cream, if you want to get a calorie product, cream or fruit.
Kefir cottage cheese at home
Curd made from kefir will have a delicate, soft texture, but have a sour taste. It will be good to use such cottage cheese for preparing a variety of cottage cheese products or as an independent dish with the addition of fruits or sweet jam. The preparation of cottage cheese from kefir is similar to the process of obtaining it from milk: kefir is heat treated, after which the cottage cheese is separated from the whey.
An interesting recipe for obtaining cottage cheese from frozen kefir is considered: place a lump of sour milk frozen in a freezer at room temperature in a tissue bag. In a few hours, after the process of separating the liquid part from the solid part, you will receive a long-awaited tasty product.
How to make low-fat cottage cheese at home
Cottage cheese made from skim milk is a dietary and at the same time full-fledged energy product, containing all useful substances. Low-fat curd is ideal for people on a diet with limited fat, 100 g of such a product contains less than 1.8% fat.
Pasteurized low-fat or 1% milk is used for this process. The entire cooking procedure is similar to obtaining cottage cheese from ordinary milk, the only difference is that the fermentation of such a product in a natural way will take much longer, therefore, starter cultures in the form of low-fat yogurt or kefir are used to speed up the process. To sour one liter of milk, you need 2-3 tbsp. l. leaven.
How to make grainy curd
A variety of ordinary cottage cheese - granular cottage cheese - is a dietary low-calorie food that has no contraindications. It is prepared from non-fat pasteurized milk using a special starter culture - calcium chloride. The special flavor of this product is achieved due to the saturation of low-fat curd grains with milk cream and salt.
To cook such cottage cheese at home, you will need products:
- 1 liter of low-fat milk;
- 1, 5 Art. l. calcium chloride;
- 6 tbsp. l. cream (the fat content of the cooked curd will depend on the original% fat content of the cream);
- salt to taste.
The cooking process is quick and uncomplicated:
- In an unenamelled container, heat the milk well, almost bringing it to a boil.
- Then, after turning off the heat, add calcium chloride and mix thoroughly.
- The composition must stand for a little so that the curd grains separate from the liquid.
- Separate the curd from the whey.
- Salt the already dry product and add cream. Grainy homemade cottage cheese is ready.
Making cheese from cottage cheese
On your own, you can try to make another healthy and nutritious dairy product - cheese from cottage cheese.
To do this, you need the following products:
- 200 g of homemade fatty cottage cheese;
- 200 ml of milk;
- a mixture of one egg and 50 g of butter;
- 0.5 tsp soda;
- salt, spices to taste.
Homemade cheese is prepared like this:
- Place homemade cottage cheese (it is better if it is grainy, low in whey) in a bowl, pour milk over it and bring the whole mixture to a boil.
- After boiling, reduce the heat, stirring gently, making sure that the entire contents of the saucepan are evenly heated.
- As soon as the whey separates in the dishes, discard the resulting curd lump in a colander or a thick layer of gauze.
- Transfer the dry curd mass to a cauldron, in which you will further cook the cheese.
- Add a mixture of butter, egg, baking soda and salt to the convenience food. Stir.
- Next, cook the whole mass for 5-8 minutes over low heat, stirring constantly.
- The readiness of the cheese is easy to determine: it will stretch, become sticky, viscous and begin to lag behind the walls of the cauldron.
- Pour the hot cheese into the prepared mold and leave to set.
How to cook cottage cheese at home - watch the video:
After making homemade cottage cheese, you will have a useful product - serum, which can be used both in cooking for preparing various baked goods, and in home cosmetology.
