Cottage cheese dumplings - general cooking principles
Vareniki is a dish of Ukrainian national cuisine known all over the world, derived from dumplings, which is loved by everyone, both adults and children. Dumplings are good in their versatility. They can be prepared from unleavened dough with any filling - fruit, vegetable, meat, and make both sweet and salty.
Dumplings with cottage cheese are good because this dish is eaten with pleasure even by those who, in their pure form, don’t like cottage cheese very much. Cottage cheese is a very useful product, especially for children, as it contains a lot of protein and the correct proportions of fats and carbohydrates. There is preferably cottage cheese several times a week, for breakfast or lunch. But in order to use this dish to be more pleasant and tastier, make delicious dumplings, ordinary or lazy. Dumplings with cottage cheese can be prepared both in a sweet form, and in the form of a main dish.
Dumplings with curd - preparation of products and dishes
It is believed that the dumplings do easy. This is true, but as in the preparation of any dish, there also have their own subtleties.
In order to dumplings turned out delicious, it is recommended to use fresh home-made cottage cheese of average fat content. To prevent the cottage cheese from melting inside the dumpling during cooking, do not put a lot of sugar in the filling, but you can add chopped greens or green onions. If you use fat cottage cheese, then squeeze it thoroughly before you start cooking and add egg yolk to it.
An important point for delicious dumplings is a strong dough shell (so that the filling does not fall out during cooking), and at the same time gentle and airy. Follow the recipes for making dough, described below, and the dumplings you get just perfect!
Dumplings with cottage cheese can be cooked both steamed and in the traditional way, boiling flour products in a saucepan with water. If you decide to cook the dumplings on a pair, then there is no need to use a double boiler - pull on a saucepan half full of water, gauze and place on the surface of the dumplings. Cover the pan with a lid and let the dumplings cook for 5 to 7 minutes.
If you are cooking dumplings in a pan, then let it be wide enough.
Recipes for dumplings with cottage cheese:
Recipe 1: Dumplings with cottage cheese with greens (savory)
Dumplings with cottage cheese, cooked according to this recipe, can be served with sour cream and sprinkled with chopped greens. This dish is tasty and satisfying, serve it best for dinner.
Ingredients Required:
Dough for cooking dumplings
- Flour 1 cup
- Water 1 cup
- Sunflower oil 2 tablespoons
- ½ tsp soda
- Salt
For filling
- Cottage cheese 250 grams
- Chicken egg 1 piece
- Dill
- Salt
Cooking method:
- Knead the dough for the dumplings with cottage cheese. To do this, mix the flour, sifted through a sieve, soda and salt in a deep dish. Heat a glass of water, bring to a boil, add vegetable oil to the water, and then pour the mixture into the flour. It is believed that the dough for dumplings should be kneaded in cold, icy water, but this is just one of the most well-known methods. Stir first with a spoon until the mixture is hot, and then, when it is cold, stir the dough with your hands until it becomes soft and elastic.
- Sprinkle a clean layer of flour over the clean surface of the table and roll the dough into a layer about 2-2.5 centimeters with a rolling pin. Cup make circles from dough. Dumplings made from such dough will be very tasty, even if the dough is thick.
- Prepare the filling. Wash greens, dry with paper towels and cut as small as possible. Beat in the cottage cheese egg, add salt, dill and mix.
- Put a spoonful of cottage cheese filling in the middle of a pastry cup and connect the edges of the dumpling. Try to close the edges as tightly as possible so that the dumpling does not fall apart during cooking.
- The water in the pan, where the dumplings will boil, bring to a boil and add salt. Put the dumplings in the pan and as soon as they come up, cook for about 3-4 minutes.
Recipe 2: Dessert Dumplings with Cottage Cheese
This recipe for sweet dumplings will delight the little ones who are not indifferent to desserts. Do not put a lot of sugar in the filling, otherwise it will melt in boiling water, and the dumpling will fall apart. Serve chilled, watering with sour cream and sprinkling with powdered sugar. It would also be appropriate to add jam, jam, condensed milk to the dumplings. In the stuffing for such dumplings, you can also add raisins, sliced dried apricots or candied fruits.
Ingredients Required:
- Cottage cheese 250 grams
- Chicken egg 1 piece
- Vanilla
- Sugar
Cooking method:
- Sift the flour onto a clean tabletop and place it in a slide. With your hands, make a well in the flour and add sugar, a little salt and one egg, then pour in water (it is better to heat the water a little). Mix well with your hands and, making a lump of dough, set it aside for half an hour.
- Beat in a cottage cheese egg, add a little sugar, vanilla, mix.
- As soon as the dough is infused, roll it with a rolling pin on a clean, floured table. Make a thin layer and with the help of a glass cut circles for future dumplings.
- Spread cottage cheese filling in the middle of each mug with a spoon. Connect the edges of the dumplings with wet hands.
- Put a saucepan in which you will cook the dumplings, with water on the fire. As soon as the water in the pan boil, put boiled dumplings there. As soon as they emerge, boil the dumplings for a couple of minutes, reach out with a slotted spoon and serve.
Recipe 3: Lazy dumplings with cottage cheese
Many people remember lazy dumplings from the time of kindergarten, where they were especially tasty. It is very simple to cook such dumplings, because the name speaks for itself. In fact, this dish does not look like real dumplings, but resembles the recipe for kneading dough. These dumplings do not exactly fall apart and just get.
Ingredients Required:
- Cottage cheese homemade 400 grams low-fat
- Egg yolk 4 pieces
- Butter 50 grams
- Sugar
Cooking method:
- Cottage cheese should be passed through a blender or a sieve, if it is coarse-grained. In fact, you can not do this, but the fewer the grains of cottage cheese are, the more tender the lazy dumplings will turn out.
- Melt the butter.
- Beat in egg yolks to cottage cheese, add sugar and salt, pour in melted butter, mix.
- Sift the flour through a sieve and add a thin stream to the curd, stir well.
If you use a fat cottage cheese, which is more wet than low-fat, then add more flour.
Make a sausage from the obtained dough and cut it into “dumplings” with a knife - you have to get free-form dumplings. After that, boil them in boiling water for about 5-7 minutes until ready and, catching with a slotted spoon, serve to the table.
Recipe 4: Lazy dumplings with cottage cheese and semolina
It is quite successful to combine the useful properties of semolina and cottage cheese in a dish called "lazy dumplings". It is best to take low-fat cottage cheese or containing a small percentage of fat. But if you have in stock only fat cottage cheese, then decoys should be put a little more, 2-3 tablespoons. Note that flour is not needed for this recipe.
Ingredients Required:
- Cottage cheese 300 grams low-fat
- 5 tablespoons semolina
- Chicken egg 2 pieces
- Vanilla
- Sugar
- Salt
Cooking method:
- Cottage cheese should be rubbed through a sieve or chopped with a blender. This step is not mandatory, but the dish will be much more tender and airy.
- Beat the egg with sugar, vanilla and salt with a mixer or in a bowl of a blender, add cottage cheese and semolina, mix again and leave for fifteen minutes to allow the semolina to swell. It is impossible to make a sausage from such a “dough” and cut it into pieces, because the dumplings will be formed with a spoon.
- Put a pot of water in which you will cook the dumplings on the stove, bring the water to a boil. Spoon dip the curd mass into the boiling water and boil the "dumplings" for about 5 minutes. Remove the dumplings with a skimmer and place on a plate. Serve, watering with jam or condensed milk.
Cottage cheese dumplings - secrets and useful tips from the best chefs
- Whether you get dumplings with cottage cheese or not, depends largely on the cottage cheese. If the cheese is fat or crumbly, then add more semolina or egg yolk for bonding. But it's best to use low-fat cottage cheese, ground through a sieve or blender. Remove all liquid from the curd, squeeze it well, and then mix it with the yolks.
- One of the secret secrets of delicious dumplings is sifted flour. This component of the test is screened not for cleansing debris, but for oxygenation.
- If you cook ordinary dumplings, then do not put a lot of sugar. Sugar melts in hot water and thereby melts the dough. It is better to sprinkle sugar ready meal.
- Lazy dumplings with cottage cheese will be especially tasty if cooked in a slow cooker. If you have this wonderful machine, then select the "Steam" mode. The dumplings prepared in this way will not lose their shape and will not fall apart.
- The dough for dumplings should not be rolled out very thin, otherwise the dumplings will not work. The optimum thickness is 1.5 - 2 centimeters. When the dough is ready, set it aside from the hot plate.
- It is best to cook the dumplings in a wide, not deep container in a large amount of slightly salted water (1 tsp. Of salt per 1 liter of water).
- To prevent the dumplings from sticking together, brush them with sunflower oil or butter as soon as you get them out of the pan.
