Cottage cheese is a product containing milk protein separated from whey. It is obtained using lactic acid bacteria or using calcium chloride. But the latter is not a fermented milk product in the strict sense of the word.
The process of making cottage cheese at home differs from the factory one; as for the taste, homemade cottage cheese lacks pungency and seems more dietary. Therefore, for example, for stomach ulcers, it is recommended not to buy store-bought cottage cheese, but to use homemade cottage cheese.
Making cottage cheese at home - recipe No. 1
What you will need:
- For 0.5 liters of raw or pasteurized cow's milk - 25 g of lemon juice. Calorie content 100 grams 60 kcal.
How to cook: Pour milk into a bowl, squeeze the prepared lemon juice into it and stir. Cover the container with a lid and leave it for about 8 hours. After receiving the curd, pour off the whey, squeeze out the curd mass and cool it.
The disadvantage of this method is that Only natural milk is suitable. It is available in stores, but it is expensive.
Alternative recipe for making cottage cheese at home No. 2
This method is fast.
What you will need: For 0.5 liters of milk you will need several tablespoons of kefir (you can use sour cream or yogurt).
Cooking method. Pour milk into a saucepan, add kefir and put on fire. When the milk boils, it will begin to curdle. Stir it with a spoon until the curdling process is completed and you see curd. Place the cottage cheese in a colander to drain the whey. Place the mixture in cheesecloth and squeeze thoroughly. The cottage cheese is ready.
What happens during the preparation of cottage cheese
Classic cottage cheese is prepared as follows: milk is fermented with a special streptococcal starter. At home, as you can see, a tablespoon of a “handy” oxidizing agent is added to milk as a starter. Bacteria begin to multiply rapidly and form an acidic environment in which the protein precipitates into a cheesy precipitate. This process occurs at a temperature of approximately 20 degrees Celsius and lasts approximately 6-8 hours. (method 1). After separating the whey, the curd must be cooled so that the reproduction process stops and the curd does not turn out too sour.
Method No. 3 for preparing homemade cottage cheese (using hot water)
Cooking cottage cheese at home may have some nuances. To speed up the separation of whey, the curd is boiled by pouring in hot water at a temperature of 60-65 degrees. Pour in slowly, in a quiet stream, constantly stirring the curd, and then leave it alone for 15 minutes. During this time he floats up.
If you don't cook a large number of cottage cheese, you don’t need to add water. Instead, heat the product in a water bath. If you pour in water, observe the temperature regime: hot water should not be more than 40 degrees, otherwise the cottage cheese will turn out too dry. Place the mass that has separated from the whey on cheesecloth in a colander and leave for 10 minutes. After this, the cottage cheese can be put in the refrigerator.
Unique composition of cottage cheese
The composition of cottage cheese is unique. It contains up to 17%! protein, this is more than some types of meat. In addition, a wide variety of microorganisms live in cottage cheese in very concentrated quantities. For this reason it is considered difficult for digestive system product and cannot be stored for a long time.
Shelf life of cottage cheese: no more than 3 days and no higher than 6 degrees.
We can say that cottage cheese has a poorly controlled microflora; it contains not only extremely beneficial, but also pathogenic microorganisms. This does not allow it to be used in the diet of people suffering from dysbacteriosis. Nevertheless, cottage cheese is a product of extreme value and is indispensable in the diet menu for many diseases.
If acidophilus is added to cottage cheese, it turns into food with medicinal properties, which is prescribed for anemia, exhaustion, diarrhea and dysentery.
The article uses materials from the book. Boytsov and Liflyandsky “How to overcome dysbacteriosis.”
How to make cottage cheese at home © Magic food.ru
Having once made homemade cottage cheese, I stopped buying it in stores. Because even in the coolest supermarket, the most expensive farm cottage cheese will not be as aromatic and tender as home-cooked cottage cheese. So, I’ll tell you how to make delicious cottage cheese from cow’s or goat’s milk yourself.
The following questions often arise for those who make cottage cheese at home for the first time. I will answer them.
1. What kind of milk do you use to make homemade cottage cheese?
Both whole milk and pasteurized or sterilized milk are suitable. Whole milk sours best and fastest. Pasteurized or sterilized a little longer. UHT milk is not suitable because... it is absolutely dead. If it turns sour, it will not be done by the same bacteria that are needed for cottage cheese.
You can take both cow's and goat's milk.
2. Is it necessary to boil milk before putting it to sour?
If you take milk from a healthy cow, from trusted people, then it is not necessary to boil it. You will only need to sterilize the finished cottage cheese.
If you buy whole milk at the market, it is better to bring the milk to a boil and turn it off when the first bubbles appear on the surface. The main thing is not to overheat the milk, otherwise the cottage cheese will turn out tasteless.
3. How long should milk sour?
From 2 to 4 days. You need to wait for the light green water - whey - to leave the milk. The smell should be pleasant, sour milk, without bitterness.
4. What to do with the serum?
Drink and drink again. This is an incredibly healing product! It continues to be healthy and tasty for up to 2 days. From the third day to a week, the whey can be used for cosmetic purposes or for making pancakes, pies, etc.
So, let's start making homemade cottage cheese.
1. Take a can of milk and put it in warm place. My milk sours well on the table next to the stove.
2. After 2-4 days the milk will sour. A layer of sour cream will appear on top, and greenish transparent whey will appear at the bottom and along the walls of the jar. Some people skim off the sour cream and eat it separately. I give it to the cats. Although it's delicious on its own, I'm not a fan of sour cream. If you leave the sour cream, the cottage cheese will turn out to be fattier, and the final whey will not be transparent, but cloudy white. But that doesn’t make it any less useful.
3. Take a deep pan, put any fabric, for example, a towel on the bottom (so that the jar does not burst). Place the jar of cottage cheese in the pan and add water. It is desirable that the water level reaches the level of the cottage cheese in the jar, but if this does not work out, then at least up to half the jar. Turn on low heat and keep the jar for 30 minutes so that the cottage cheese is sterilized. The water should bubble slightly, but not boil, otherwise the cottage cheese will cook and look like rubber.
3. Remove the jar from the pan. There are two ways to separate the curds from the whey. In any case, we will need gauze approximately 30 by 30 cm, folded in 2-4 layers.
- our grandmothers used the first method. They hung a gauze bag with cottage cheese over the pan, the whey drained off, but the cottage cheese remained. I prefer this method:
- take a regular steamer and put gauze on the top saucepan with holes. Pour the cottage cheese from the jar onto the cheesecloth. The whey will drain into the lower pan, and the curd will remain in the gauze.
4. The serum drains for about 30-40 minutes. Do not speed up the process by squeezing the gauze bag. Under strong pressure, the curd will begin to seep and flow together with the whey. The end result will be less finished product. Let the serum drain on its own. Taste it. It is sour, and most importantly incredibly healthy for the whole body! It is good for washing your face and hair. This is an indispensable product for intimate hygiene. No store-bought gel with lactic acid can replace whey! Especially for women who suffer from thrush.
In this article:
Making cottage cheese in your own kitchen will not be difficult for any housewife. It is customary to use store-bought or farm milk as the main raw material, regardless of fat content. Cottage cheese can be made from ready-made kefir; sometimes milk is added to the resulting consistency.
Homemade cottage cheese has many advantages, because it can be prepared at any time and in the required quantities. This process will be especially relevant for families with children, since there will always be fresh and useful product.
Features of cottage cheese production at home
To make 500 grams of cottage cheese you need:
- 2 liters of milk and 1 liter of kefir;
- sieve, slotted spoon (gauze);
- 2 pans of different sizes.
The milk should be poured into a saucepan, covered with a lid and left in a warm place for 5-6 hours.
During the specified time it should turn sour. For a rich taste, you can add 6 tablespoons of kefir (low-fat sour cream). The resulting mass with sour milk is placed in a saucepan and placed in a water bath.
The contents of the pan with milk are constantly stirred.
As the water boils spoiled milk will begin to gradually move away from the edges of the pan, and the yellowish liquid released will indicate the initial stage of the formation of the curd mass. If such signs occur, remove the pans from the heat and cool. Separate the curd from the whey with a slotted spoon or gauze.
In the latter case, a gauze napkin should be placed on the bottom of the sieve and the almost finished product should be carefully placed on it. The edges of the gauze are tightly tied together and suspended to drain the whey. This seemingly simple process has its own tricks.
If the water is overheated, the curd will turn out crumbly; if it is underheated, there will be difficulties in separating the whey and the finished product will be too sour. If there is a goal to obtain cottage cheese with a denser consistency, then a scalded kitchen board is placed on the gauze with the product, and a weight is placed on top. After directly receiving the cottage cheese, many throw away the resulting whey, but in vain. You can use it to make jelly or fruit and berry jelly.
The process of producing cottage cheese based on kefir
Feedstock - kefir Place in a warm place to quickly separate the whey. After separating it, the pan with kefir is placed in a water bath and heated to directly obtain the curd mass. Placing the mixture in a gauze (cloth) bag will help the whey drain out. Production of homemade cottage cheese using the cold method. The following recipe for making cottage cheese is quite popular: 1 liter of kefir in a package is placed in the freezer for 3 days, after which the frozen product is taken out, placed in a colander with gauze and wait for the whey to separate.
The end result is a tender and very tasty cottage cheese.
Preparation of calcined cottage cheese
The product made in this way will have a low acidity level, so it is ideal for dietary and baby food. The main feature of preparing cottage cheese is the addition of calcium lactic acid (diluted with water) at the boiling stage of milk with constant stirring (3 teaspoons per 2 liters of milk). The powder can be purchased at pharmacies. The yield of the finished product will be 300-400 grams. Further, the technology is similar to the methods described above.
Cottage cheese is unique milk product, from which you can prepare a mass delicious dishes, or you can eat it raw. But in the store it is not always possible to find a quality product that has the proper taste and contains a set of healing ingredients. Therefore, it is worth considering how to prepare cottage cheese at home.
Composition and properties
Cottage cheese is the most common solid milk product, which has been produced in different parts of the world since ancient times. At home, it was traditionally made from sour milk or curdled milk by separating the liquid whey from the solids using a hot or cold method. Modern factory methods differ from folk recipes, store-bought cottage cheese can lose many valuable components, although it is an airy, homogeneous mass that is pleasant to look at, but not necessarily to taste.
The composition of BZHU (proteins, fats, carbohydrates) varies among different varieties of cottage cheese. The fact is that according to standards, it is customary to divide this product into 3 categories of fat content: fat (more than 18%), semi-fat or dietary (9-18%), low-fat (2-9%).
Depending on this, the standard composition of BZHU and the calorie content of a dairy product are as follows:
- fatty: proteins – 15 g, fats – 18 g, carbohydrates – 2.8 g, calorie content 236 kcal/100 g;
- semi-bold: proteins – 18 g, fats – 9 g, carbohydrates – 3 g, calorie content 169 kcal/100 g;
- low-fat: proteins – 22 g, fats – 3 g, carbohydrates – 3.3 g, calorie content 120 kcal/100 g.
Homemade cottage cheese, like other fermented milk products, contains lactic acid and lactose. These components, together with some enzymes, have a beneficial effect on the stomach and digestion. Among the vitamins, we can note A, C and D, as well as group B. The product also contains useful chemical elements: calcium, phosphorus, iron.
The benefits of cottage cheese are enormous; it is definitely recommended for children during their growth period, the elderly, for fractures, kidney, liver and stomach diseases, rickets, cardiovascular diseases, pregnant and lactating women. Finally, this is simply a nutritious dish that can be used regularly in the diet with virtually no contraindications.
As a source of iron, amino acids and several vitamins, homemade cottage cheese is very useful for enriching bone tissue, stabilizing nervous system, prevention of metabolism. It has been proven that this product promotes the generation of growth hormone, which is important in children and adolescence. Studies prove that cottage cheese burns excess fat and helps with weight loss. It also helps increase muscle mass, therefore widely popular among weightlifters, is an excellent preventative against atherosclerosis.
Cottage cheese has also been used externally: it is used as compresses for blows, cuts, bruises, and burns. How cosmetic product it is also used in the form of creams or masks for the face and body. As you can see, this is a truly universal product.
The harm of cottage cheese has not been proven to a large extent, except perhaps from excessive consumption of the most fatty varieties containing large amounts of animal fats and cholesterol.
It's about about a quality product homemade. This cannot be said about the many questionable cottage cheese products with chemical ingredients that are available in many stores.
Cooking features
There are several ways to cook cottage cheese at home. All of them include the following steps: creating curdled milk from whole milk, heat treatment, extraction and removal excess liquid. For production, a regular saucepan and stove, water bath, multicooker or microwave are suitable. There is also cold method production without heat treatment.
In order to make from fresh milk sour milk, it is best to use glass or earthenware, for subsequent cooking use enamel or galvanized pans, and for further storage any suitable container, for example, plastic containers. For squeezing, you need a piece of clean gauze, for example, medical gauze.
To ferment fresh milk and make curdled milk from it, there are several traditional methods. The main thing is to add an ingredient that contains yeast or acid to promote fermentation. This could be a piece of rye cracker, a couple of spoons of sour cream or a glass of kefir, half a teaspoon of vinegar or citric acid. If you use not store-bought, but domestic cow or goat milk, then to be safe it is better to boil it.
Homemade curdled milk should be stored in a warm place: near the stove, radiator, behind the refrigerator. Avoid exposure to sunlight as it will destroy healthy vitamin C. For complete aging under such conditions, three days are enough.
You should not keep the yogurt mixture in the refrigerator, since the milk does not ferment, but simply deteriorates over time.
How to choose raw materials?
Many people admit that village cow's milk is most suitable for making high-quality cottage cheese. It is the fattest, retains all the beneficial ingredients and does not contain additives that prevent fermentation. Not every city dweller has access to it, then it is quite possible to use a store-bought one, but there are a number of nuances here.
- You need to choose a product with a fat content of at least 3.6%.
- Do not buy milk with a long shelf life; most likely, they contain antibiotics that prevent fermentation.
- Don’t be lazy, check production and expiration dates, and purchase only fresh raw materials.
Pasteurized milk from the store is good because in any case it will not be as fatty as natural milk. The cottage cheese made from it is dietary and low-calorie, this is especially true for those people who are on a diet and avoid consuming excess calories.
Country milk is usually boiled before making yogurt and cottage cheese. Boiled or baked milk loses a number of remarkable properties, in particular, even at a temperature of +50 degrees, some useful enzymes and vitamins burn out. But they are unlikely to be present in a store product; factory processing is even more merciless.
To give homemade cottage cheese a special taste, not only curdled milk is used, but also other ingredients that are also of dairy origin. This can be fermented baked milk, kefir, yogurt in various proportions. There are recipes for sourdough with sour cream, which serves as an oxidizing agent for fresh milk.
From the whey remaining after straining out the solid product, you can make delicious okroshka or dough for pancakes or dumplings.
Best Recipes
For the simplest DIY cottage cheese recipe, take 3 liters of ready-made yogurt, pour it into a five-liter saucepan and put it on low heat. The mass is heated, but not brought to a boil; it needs to be stirred from time to time. When large lumps float to the surface, you need to remove the container from the heat, let it cool and gradually pour it into a colander with gauze folded in 4 layers, pushing out the large lumps with a spoon. Place a separate bowl or pan under the draining liquid. After the whey has drained, tie the gauze into a knot and squeeze thoroughly.
The squeezed curd mass is suspended in a bundle on a rope. Instead, you can use a press: cover the cottage cheese with a flat plate on top and press with a weight for several hours.
Instead of cooking, you can cook cottage cheese in a water bath. To do this, take a large pan of water and place a smaller container with yogurt on top. After boiling, you need to steam the mixture for 15-20 minutes, stirring occasionally.
You can cook cottage cheese in the microwave very quickly. To do this, 1 liter of curdled milk is poured into a glass or porcelain container with high sides, it is placed in a microwave oven in open form, the power is set to 350 - 400 W. You need to cook for 10 minutes, after which the curd mass floats to the surface, and the whey remains at the bottom. The consistency turns out to be quite dry; you don’t need to squeeze it out in gauze.
And this dairy product is also easy to prepare in a slow cooker. In a 5 liter bowl you need to pour 2-3 liters of yogurt, set the heating mode and leave for half an hour for a juicy consistency or 45 minutes for a dry and crumbly consistency. After cooking, place the mixture in a colander and let cool.
Without heat treatment, homemade cottage cheese is prepared as follows. The curdled milk is poured into any suitable container and placed in the freezer until completely frozen. Then it is taken out and placed in a colander lined with gauze, which is placed on a bowl to allow the whey to drain. Next, you need to wait until the mixture has completely melted and the liquid has drained. The result is a delicate and crumbly product.
Instead of yogurt, you can use low-fat kefir to make delicious cottage cheese. It is poured into a transparent glass container and placed in a warm, dark place. When whey forms in the mass, place the container in a water bath and heat for 15 minutes, then separate the curd and strain on gauze.
A delicious dessert for children can be prepared by heating 3 liters of milk to a boil, then adding 1.5 liters of kefir. Next, the mixture is heated over low heat for 10 minutes with stirring. When it curls, it needs to be cooled and strained through a colander with gauze.
126Health 03.10.2014
Dear readers, today we will talk about how to make cottage cheese at home. Probably every family hardly goes a day without this product. We eat the cottage cheese itself and prepare various dishes from it. Including, probably, everyone’s favorite cheesecakes. But let’s ask ourselves the question: “The cottage cheese that we buy in the store, is it good for us?” I think everyone will agree that homemade cottage cheese and store-bought cottage cheese cannot be compared in quality, right? And if anyone has small children, then the issue is not discussed at all. I think every mother will definitely find time and prepare homemade cottage cheese for her children. There is no chemistry in it, our love is put into the process of making cottage cheese, so today I propose to talk in more detail about how you can make cottage cheese yourself at home.
U Slavic peoples Since ancient times, cottage cheese has occupied one of the main places in the diet; people ate it almost every day, knowing about its benefits for the body. And there was a lot of milk, and since there was nowhere to store it, it fermented quickly, so cottage cheese was made from yogurt. Once upon a time in Rus', cottage cheese was called cheese, and all dishes prepared from it were called cheese, so the name of our favorite cheesecakes came to us from ancient times.
In those days, peasant farms also made homemade hard cheese; it was made from pressed cottage cheese, which was placed in a hot oven, put under the press again, and again into the oven, and this was done several times. As a result, the cottage cheese turned into a dry dense mass, which was stored for a very long time, literally helping out many families during the long cold winters.
Cottage cheese can be called a perfect food product, in which all the beneficial properties of milk are concentrated, and especially if the cottage cheese is homemade, prepared at home.
How to make cottage cheese at home
When we prepare cottage cheese ourselves, we are confident in its quality, and the taste of homemade cottage cheese is unusually pleasant, and it is not at all difficult to prepare. There are several ways, you can make cottage cheese from milk, or from kefir, but there are certain general rules, without which high-quality cottage cheese will not be produced.
It is very important to separate the whey in time when heating curdled milk; if it is overheated, the curd will turn out hard, it will crumble, and if the fermented milk is not heated enough, the whey will not separate well and the curd will turn out sour.
Don’t worry if something goes wrong the first time, skills, as always, come with experience, and over time this process will seem very simple to you.
For any recipe, first take 1 liter of milk and try to cook it. As I already said, it is important to remove the cottage cheese from the stove in time so that it turns out especially tender, and this can only be achieved with practice. The amount of cottage cheese is difficult to predict; it depends on the fat content and quality of the milk.
Homemade cottage cheese made from milk. Recipe. Photo
Pour a liter of raw fresh milk into a saucepan, close the lid and place in a dark place, at normal room temperature milk turns sour in about a day.
Pour the milk into a saucepan and place it under the lid in a dark place until it ferments.
Next, it is best to use a water bath, placing a saucepan with sour milk in another, larger saucepan, this makes it easier to control the process of separating the whey. But sometimes I put a saucepan with yogurt directly on the stove, placing a special metal stand under it, reduce the heat to minimum and do not leave the stove so as not to overheat.
Place the saucepan with yogurt in a water bath.
Watch when the yogurt moves away from the edges of the pan, yellowish whey appears, and characteristic curd clots appear, this takes about 25-30 minutes, then remove the pan from the stove and leave until it cools.
Keep it on the fire until curd clots appear and the whey is completely separated (it took me 35 minutes)
Drain the cooled cottage cheese in a colander, but preferably onto a clean gauze napkin, tie the corners of it and hang it so that the whey drips off. The cottage cheese will be very tasty!
Pour the contents into a colander and squeeze a little.
This is how the cottage cheese turned out.
And this is the serum left.
The most delicious and healthy cottage cheese It’s made from raw milk, but when I don’t have the opportunity to buy farm milk, I make cottage cheese from pasteurized milk, which turns out to be an excellent product that is much tastier than store-bought milk.
Making cottage cheese at home from kefir
To prepare cottage cheese, take a liter of kefir, it is advisable that the kefir is fresh, for better separation of the whey you can add a spoon sugar syrup, but this is optional.
Place the kefir in an enamel bowl in a water bath and heat it over low heat for about half an hour, then leave it covered to cool. During this time, the curd will finally separate from the whey, and we again pour all this onto a sieve or cheesecloth and get a delicate, nutritious product.
Cottage cheese at home. Video
For those who don’t quite understand the process of making cottage cheese from kefir, I invite you to watch the video.
Making low-fat homemade cottage cheese
As a rule, farm milk is quite fatty, and the cottage cheese produced from it is also high in fat; this must be taken into account if, for any indication, a low-fat diet is recommended for you.
Low-fat cottage cheese can also be prepared at home, but it requires low-fat milk. There is pasteurized one percent milk on sale, and you need to make low-fat cottage cheese from it.
This kind of milk takes much longer to ferment, and to speed up the process you just need to add two tablespoons of kefir to a liter of milk. Otherwise, we do everything the same as with regular milk, the cottage cheese will not be so loose, but tasty and containing all the useful substances.
Low-fat cottage cheese is good for everyone who has problems with excess weight, who has problems with the liver, pancreas, so as not to overload them.
How long can cottage cheese prepared at home be stored?
You can store this cottage cheese for 3 days in the refrigerator. Now imagine how much extra there is in store-bought cottage cheese, if it has a shelf life of 2-3 weeks, or even more. It's all chemistry. It is up to everyone to decide whether to buy such cottage cheese or prepare cottage cheese at home.
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