When it comes to home-made cottage cheese, a long row appears on the collective farm market with jars of sour cream, large bottles of milk, fresh butter and large basins, saucepans, plastic containers with cottage cheese: buttery with a creamy tint, snow-white with small grains of grains, medium - milk abundance for every taste.
The same picture, but near the milk window of the supermarket, for some reason, does not cause such an appetite, despite the colorful packaging, a clear, geometric layout of the goods and neat, smiling saleswomen. You take a pack of cottage cheese, and the parchment packaging is sticky! Or, no, not so. You pick up a plastic jar of cottage cheese, and it says that the shelf life is 2 weeks, and this is not the most awesome version of the inscription. You return home with firm confidence that you are carrying a "pig in a poke" for dinner. Natural dairy product cannot be stored for more than 3 days. Of course, not everything is so terrible. It happens that luck: both the manufacturer is conscientious, and the seller is interested in attracting buyers.
But in the market they will give you a try and talk about life, and, in the meantime, you can find out in which meadow the cow grazed from which milk was made, what it was fed with and when it was vaccinated. Well, this is a real choice, as they say, with taste and sense. Good homemade cottage cheese is always in great demand. If you are late, and it is over - no big deal. There is still some milk left, and the village women are always in a hurry to return home early - they have a large farm, a lot of work. Therefore, after bargaining and buying 5-10 liters of milk, you will also remain in the gain - they will certainly be inferior in price. We return home and begin to conjure, or rather, create: it is this word that is etymologically linked to the word "cottage cheese".
Homemade curd from curdled milk - preparation of raw materials
Raw materials, in this case, are called milk purchased on the market. We do not consider options for preparing cottage cheese from milk purchased in the store, since even natural whole milk, but in the original packaging, will not give the desired result. In production conditions, milk is subjected to obligatory pasteurization at high temperature. As a result, low-quality dry curd grain is obtained from such milk.
Home-made cottage cheese is different from industrial methods of milk processing. Pasteurization of milk occurs at a temperature from 630C (long-term processing) to 900C (instant pasteurization). Lactic acid bacteria die at 37-450C. That is, after warming the milk, its fermentation in a natural way becomes impossible. In addition to the fact that during high-temperature processing, milk loses almost all of its valuable vitamins and amino acids, it loses its ability to clot, and it is this quality of the product that underlies the preparation of cottage cheese.
But what about sanitary standards, and how to cook curd from yogurt at home to get a natural product and, at the same time, protect yourself from pathogenic microbes?
The answer to this question lies in the ability of sour milk bacteria to produce lactic acid. Raw cow's milk contains 96% of harmful microorganisms and 4% of lactobacilli, but these four percent are enough to create an acidic environment and destroy pathogenic microorganisms.
If it is so easy to get rid of pests, then why is milk being pasteurized in factories? Everything is simple. Tons of milk are brought to dairies, they are collected on farms and in private farms, pouring everything together into large tanks. With such volumes, it is difficult to keep track of the purity of the raw materials, especially since milk is a perishable product and it is necessary to bring it for processing quickly. A housewife buys milk from one seller. It is no accident that at the beginning of the article it was mentioned in such detail about personal communication with the seller in the market.
What else is the process of preparing milk and how to cook curd from yogurt at home?
Depending on the fat content in milk, cottage cheese can also be of different fat content. Whole homemade milk may contain up to 30% fat. Therefore, if you want the cottage cheese to be dietary (non-fat) or bold, then you need to remove the cream. Let the milk settle in a glass bottle so that the oily particles float to the surface. Creaming at home is convenient in the following way: a plastic tube is inserted into the bottle with settled milk (the tube from the medical system for drip injections is suitable). The tube should touch the bottom. Lower the second end into another container, located at a level lower than the bottle. Transfer milk to another bowl until only the oily portion remains in the bottle. You can make sour cream from cream, and leave the skim milk that has been drained, leave the pan for ripening and further preparing the cottage cheese.
This completes the preparation of milk for cooking homemade curd from yogurt. We turn to the question of the main technological aspects of obtaining cottage cheese.
Homemade curd milk curd - fermentation of milk
Milk will turn sour by itself, if you put the container for several hours in a warm place. Then what is it about? That it is possible, for example, to accelerate this process.
In fresh milk to obtain yogurt (without this product, curd cannot be obtained in any way) add for fermentation:
Lemon juice or a solution of citric acid - one tablespoon per liter of warm (25-370C) milk;
Sour-milk products - sour cream, kefir, ready-made yogurt, natural yogurt. In this case, the milk is also preheated to create the most favorable conditions for the life of lactic acid bacteria;
Special starter cultures - they can be purchased at a pharmacy or specialized points of sale (acidophilus, acedin-pepsin, Lactone and others). They are added to milk according to the attached instructions for use.
Yogurt is ready, only this is half the battle. We turn to the main goal - to obtain cottage cheese from it.
Homemade curd from curdled milk - the main technological moments
First you need to know that milk is about 80% water, and only 20% are solids. From here - from a liter of milk you can get no more than 200 g of cottage cheese, and if milk is skimmed, then the weight of the finished product decreases in proportion to the proportion of fat in the composition of milk. As you know, fat also consists of water and retains moisture, which implies that the cottage cheese from skim milk will turn out to be dry, with a lower serum content. As they say, it’s a matter of taste, but if you need to get low-fat cottage cheese with a sufficient degree of moisture, then you need to strictly observe technological points.
Fermented milk needs to be warmed up, but not overheated so that milk protein does not curl to a rubber consistency. During warming up the yogurt, the mass must be constantly stirred to ensure uniform heating. The temperature of heating at home is rarely determined using a thermometer, but approximately the separation of milk protein begins at 500C. At this time, the solid mass begins to rise to the surface of the pan. In order not to dry the cottage cheese, turn off the stove and cool the serum together with the formed clot to 20-250С. After you can start pressing. It is very convenient for this purpose to line with a gauze a colander mounted above a container for draining whey. Pour the contents of the heated pan through a colander. Part of the serum drains immediately, easily separating from the clot. The whey remaining in the almost finished cottage cheese is separated by pressing, controlling the humidity of the finished product at its discretion. To do this, tie the ends of the lined gauze and hang the cottage cheese over the dishes for further draining of the liquid. In the same way, but using oppression, they get rennet cheese: the cottage cheese tied in a gauze napkin is placed under the oppression to get pressed cottage cheese.
This is the easiest way to get homemade cottage cheese from yogurt, known to mankind not one hundred, but maybe even a thousand years. Well, of course, I want, as always, variety. Then we apply more complex, but interesting options to the main recipe.
Recipe 1. Curd, fruit
Composition:
Forest berries (in assortment) 300 g
Fat-free cottage cheese 700 g
Fructose 250 g
Water 100 ml
Cooking method:
Sprinkle fructose with strawberries, raspberries, or other berries of your choice and wait for the juice to separate. Mash them, add water and boil for 5-10 minutes. After cooling the fruit mass, wipe it through a sieve to remove grains and peel. Beat cottage cheese with a blender, gradually pouring fruit syrup.
Recipe 2. Cheese, vanilla with raisins - a favorite taste of childhood
Composition:
Cream
Cottage cheese
Sugar
Vanillin, crystalline
Raisins, light
Cooking:
If the cottage cheese is oily and moist, then adding cream is not necessary. Moisten the curd grain with cream (10-15%). Proportions are chosen at our discretion. We combine all the components in a blender, and add the raisins at the end, into the whipped and magnificent curd mass, and mix it thoroughly.
Recipe 3. Cottage cheese snack, spicy
Composition:
Cherry 10 pieces
Curd 200 g
Garlic 10 g
Basil, red
Parsley
Salt
Ground Hot Peppers
Cooking:
Wash the tomatoes, cut the part with the stalk. You can do it beautifully, in a zigzag line. Remove the seed core with a spoon. Chop the greens finely, grate the garlic on the smallest grater. Put cottage cheese in a blender bowl (it is better to use bold), add prepared greens and spices. Paste into the pasta and stuff the tomatoes. On top of stuffed vegetables put hats with ponytails.
Homemade curd from curdled milk - useful tips and tricks
Too sour or too dry cottage cheese can be corrected. Pour fresh whole milk into a saucepan and heat it to 35-400С. Put the cottage cheese that needs to be improved in warmed milk and leave for 10-12 hours. After strain through cheesecloth.
For long-term storage, the cottage cheese can be frozen, but first place it in portions in containers and seal it tightly. Immediately after defrosting, cottage cheese should be used. Repeated freezing will turn it into useless biomass.
Cottage cheese for storage can be salted. This method of storing cottage cheese was used by our ancestors. If then you need to cook a dish of sweet cottage cheese, then it can be washed with water and squeezed.
