Cooking: how to make cottage cheese at home. Cottage cheese made from milk with sour cream

I don’t know about you, but buy it in our supermarkets real cottage cheese has become quite problematic, mostly for sale curd product. Even if it is written that it is cottage cheese, one has doubts whether it is good... Because in our family this is enough popular product I wondered how to make cottage cheese at home.
I recently talked about this useful product and its beneficial effects on our body, if you missed it, read it. And, of course, our body will only benefit from good cottage cheese.

There were quite a few ways to prepare homemade cottage cheese, I have already tried a couple of recipes, so I will share my experience and tell you about other methods so that you can choose the one you like best.

Whatever way you do it homemade cottage cheese, There is general tips, which are better to take into account in order to do everything correctly, and the cottage cheese turns out tasty and tender.

• If you have never made homemade cottage cheese, then you should not start with large volumes, as it may not work the first time; you still need a certain skill.
• I advise you to keep the process of preparing cottage cheese under control and not leave the stove, since excessive heat treatment will make the cottage cheese hard and dry, and if it is not enough, the whey will not separate well. A sign that it needs to be removed from the heat is the appearance of yellowish whey and characteristic curd clots. There is not and cannot be a clear recipe indicating the cooking time, since much depends on the degree of heating and on the quality original product. After doing it several times, you will already understand how best to do it, everything comes with experience.
• To make cottage cheese, you can use either homemade or farm milk, or store-bought milk. If you make it from the store, then buy it with the shortest shelf life and pasteurized, not sterilized. From one liter of pasteurized milk you can get about 200 grams. cottage cheese, from whole milk a little more than 220 - 250, depending on the fat content.
• You also need to take into account that the fat content of farm milk is quite high. If for some reason you need low-fat cottage cheese, then buy low-fat milk or skim the cream from full-fat milk.
• When you separate the whey from the curd, it is important not to overdo it during the squeezing process - the more moisture is removed, the drier the curd will be. Although sometimes you need drier cottage cheese if you make cheesecakes or other baked goods from it. So adjust the time yourself, if you need soft and moist cottage cheese, it is enough to hold it for 30 - 40 minutes, for drier cottage cheese it will take 2 - 3 hours.
• The shelf life of homemade cottage cheese is 3 - 4 days. If there is a need to save it for more long term, then the cottage cheese can be frozen by putting it in a bag or plastic container. After defrosting, it will be just as tasty and healthy, but repeated freezing will make it a useless product.

I hope the tips didn’t scare you and you still try to make cottage cheese at home. Choose best recipe and forward.

Homemade cottage cheese from milk

I tried this recipe first because some of the milk I bought had turned sour. At first I wanted to use it in baking - it turns out good with sour milk, but then I remembered that I wanted to try making cottage cheese from yogurt. I had farm milk and I knew for sure that it would make high-quality yogurt.

Store-bought milk does not always naturally ferment as it should.

Ingredients:

• in this method there is only one - milk

Homemade cottage cheese recipe from milk:

1. She poured the milk into a jar and covered it with a napkin. To prepare yogurt, it is better to use a glass jar or earthenware container, since metal utensils can affect the quality of curdled milk and make it not very tasty. It should be covered not with a lid, but with a cotton cloth, which allows air to pass through and speeds up the ripening process.
2. I put it in a warm place and after about a day the milk turned into curdled milk. But this process can take longer, it all depends on the temperature in the room. Another tip - do not place a can of milk in direct sunlight - it will, of course, turn sour faster, but it can spoil and turn green.
3. There were tips to do it in a water bath or over low heat. I chose the second option. I put the pan with sour milk on the stove. As soon as the milk began to curdle and the whey separated, I turned off the heat.
4. When the milk cooled, I drained it through a colander, after covering it with gauze. I didn’t really follow the advice, because they said that I needed to hang a gauze bag over the container so that excess liquid would drain. I needed soft and tender cottage cheese for eating, not for baking, so I left the cottage cheese in a colander in cheesecloth and, as soon as the excess liquid drained, I put the cottage cheese in a bowl.

Homemade cottage cheese made from milk, or rather from yogurt, turned out delicious, but I didn’t really like waiting a day or more, so I decided to find another recipe. Although for faster ripening it is recommended to put sour cream in the milk (1 tbsp per liter of milk) or a piece of stale rye bread, and there is also ready-made starters which are sold in pharmacies. In this case, the milk may become curdled overnight. But you still have to wait. I found a quicker recipe and really liked it.

How to quickly make cottage cheese at home

I will offer you two recipes instant cooking cottage cheese - from milk and kefir, and also from milk and lemon. Both farm milk and store-bought milk are suitable for making cottage cheese using these methods. But I can only say about the taste of the cottage cheese about the recipe with kefir - tender and tasty, and I used store-bought milk. I haven't tried it with lemon yet.

Cottage cheese made from milk and kefir

Ingredients:

• milk - 1 liter
• kefir - 0.5 liters
• salt - 0.5 tsp.

How to make cottage cheese from milk and kefir:

Since in this recipe the milk is brought to a boil, cottage cheese prepared in this way can be given to children and even infants.

Cottage cheese made from milk and lemon

Ingredients:

• milk - 1 l.
• lemon - 1/2 pcs.

Recipe for cottage cheese made from milk and lemon:

1. Bring milk to a boil
2. Add the juice from half a lemon into boiling milk; as soon as the milk curdles, remove from heat.
3. Cool and strain.

How to make calcined cottage cheese

Of course, cottage cheese already contains calcium, but some categories of people require increased content calcium - for children, pregnant women, nursing mothers, elderly people, people suffering from atherosclerosis, anemia, kidney and liver diseases.

To replenish calcium in the body, you can include calcined cottage cheese in your diet, but not more often than 2 - 3 times a week. Such healthy cottage cheese can be prepared at home by adding calcium chloride, which is sold in pharmacies.

Ingredients:

• milk - 1 l.
• calcium chloride (calcium chloride) - 2 tbsp. l. liquid or 6 gr. dry calcium

Homemade calcined cottage cheese recipe

1. Heat milk to 40 0.
2. Add calcium chloride to milk and mix well.
3. Bring the milk to a boil, stirring constantly. As soon as the milk boils, remove from heat and allow the product to cool.
4. Strain through cheesecloth.

Calcium chloride can be replaced with calcium lactate in tablets, which can also be purchased in pharmacies. The recipe is as follows: 8 - 10 tablets per 1 liter of milk. Grind the tablets into powder and add to milk, brought to a boil. Mix well, once the milk has curdled, strain it.

How to make grain cottage cheese at home

Our supermarkets sell cottage cheese, which is very popular among customers - it is a tender and tasty grain cottage cheese and it can also be made at home.

Ingredients:

• milk - 1 l.
• citric acid- 1/2 tsp.
• salt - 1/2 tsp.
• heavy cream - 6 tbsp. l.

Recipe cottage cheese with lemon juice:

1. Pour milk into a saucepan, place on the stove and bring to a boil.
2. Remove the pan from the heat, add citric acid to the milk and stir for several minutes.
3. Cover the pan with a cotton napkin and leave for 4 hours to allow the whey to separate.
4. Strain as soon as the whey has drained, without removing the curd from the gauze, rinse it with cold boiled water and squeeze to obtain dry curd.
5. Transfer the cottage cheese to a bowl, add salt, cream, mix well.

Homemade kefir cottage cheese

Another interesting recipe cottage cheese without heat treatment - you can use kefir or yogurt.

1. If curdled milk homemade, then pour it into a plastic container and put it in the freezer. Kefir can be frozen in store-bought packaging.
2. Place frozen yogurt or kefir in a colander with gauze.
3. Hang the thawed mass in gauze over some container and hold until all the whey has drained.
4. Of course, it won’t be possible to cook it quickly this way - while it thaws and drains, in total, they say, it takes about 8 hours.

Cottage cheese can often be found in the diet of athletes, although it is useful not only for building muscles. Cottage cheese - sour dairy product, which is obtained by fermenting milk or kefir and then removing the whey.

Let's share useful tips and ways to make cottage cheese at home. Minimum ingredients and time, maximum taste. Such delicious cottage cheese you've never tried it before!

• There are two cooking method cottage cheese at home: with and without heating. Each method is good in its own way: it’s all about your taste preferences and the conditions in which you prepare the cottage cheese. It is important to know that cottage cheese prepared without heating produces a more delicate consistency.

• Milk is suitable for making cottage cheese both rustic and store-bought. True, rustic sours better and faster, so there are fewer problems with it. It also has a characteristic taste that will reveal itself wonderfully in cottage cheese. When choosing, consider: what fattier milk, the fattier the kefir will be. It's the same with kefir.

• Delicious homemade cottage cheese cannot be made from cheap milk or cottage cheese. We advise don't save and choose the highest quality product.

• As for the cooking method, homemade cottage cheese can be prepared in a saucepan or water bath. These methods have no obvious advantages over each other. It all depends solely on your taste preferences and convenience.

• If you decide to prepare homemade cottage cheese by heating, we advise you to approach it responsibly. choice of dishes. This is important, since everything in enamel cookware can burn. Use cookware made of aluminum or stainless steel. This way your product will turn out exactly the way you intended.

• Before placing the cottage cheese in a colander, cover it several layers of gauze or paper towels. A colander is usually placed in a saucepan. The resulting whey will flow into it.

• Many people like it when cottage cheese turns out dry and crumbly. How to achieve this consistency of your favorite product? The ends of the gauze with which you lined the colander must be tied and hung over the pan for several hours or overnight. All this time, whey will drain from the curd, which means it will become drier.

• If you do not plan to eat all the cottage cheese at once, then you need to know rules for its storage. Home product Can be stored in the refrigerator for no more than four days.

Simple recipes for homemade cottage cheese

If store-bought options don’t suit you, it’s time to learn how to make cottage cheese at home. At first glance, it may seem that this product is quite difficult to prepare. In practice, everything is different: you need a minimum of ingredients and time. Don't be afraid and feel free to experiment.

We'll tell you what ingredients you can use to make delicious homemade cottage cheese.

Milk

• Milk 2 l

From this amount of milk you will be able to prepare approximately 400 grams of homemade cottage cheese.

Start with preparatory stage: Leave the milk in a warm place for 1-3 days. The milk should sour. There is no need to stir it. The warmer the room, the faster it will turn sour. The refrigerator is not suitable for this purpose: the milk may develop a bitter taste and bad smell. How can you tell if milk has turned sour? In consistency it becomes similar to thick jelly, whey forms around it.

When the milk has turned sour, pour it into a suitable saucepan and place over low heat. Cook the milk, stirring occasionally. You will see the result within 10-15 minutes: clots of cottage cheese will begin to form in the pan. Remove the cottage cheese from the heat and leave on the stove for another 10-15 minutes. Ready! Then transfer the cottage cheese to a colander and allow the whey to drain.

Milk without heating

• Milk 2 l

If you like cottage cheese that is more delicate and soft in consistency, then try preparing it without the help of a stove and high temperatures. Making this kind of cottage cheese is even easier. First leave the milk room temperature and wait until it sours. Then “skip” over one stage and immediately place the thickened mass in a colander lined with gauze. Leave the curd for a while to drain the whey.

Milk and lemon

• Milk 2 l
• Lemon 1 pc.

This recipe will definitely appeal to those who don't like to wait long. With the help of lemon, the milk will sour much faster, which means it will quickly reach a consistency from which you can make homemade cottage cheese.

This method is good because preliminary preparation not required. Pour milk into a saucepan and place on fire. If you use village milk, you must first boil it. If the milk is pasteurized, just warm it thoroughly, but do not boil.

Meanwhile, squeeze the juice from the lemon. For this amount of milk you will need approximately 60 milliliters of juice. Pour lemon juice into the hot milk in a thin stream and stir. The reaction will start almost instantly, and curds will begin to form from the milk. Turn off the heat and remove the pan from the stove. Cool the cottage cheese slightly and place it in a colander to drain the whey.

Kefir

• Kefir 1 l

From this amount of kefir you can get approximately 200 grams of homemade cottage cheese. It will turn out quite dense and crumbly.

Prepare two pans of different sizes and diameters. Check in advance that the smaller pan fits into the larger one without any problems. Pour water into a large saucepan so that it takes up half its volume. Place the pan on medium-high fire and bring to a boil.

Pour kefir into another pan. When the water in the large pot comes to a boil, reduce the heat to low and place the kefir in the large saucepan. Kefir will begin to disintegrate into curds and whey. Once the process starts, remove the pan from the heat. After 10 minutes, transfer the cottage cheese to a colander and let the whey drain.

It is important for mothers that children receive all the healthiest things in their diet, and therefore factory-made fermented milk products are increasingly being replaced by homemade ones. For example, cottage cheese is excellent at home from raw and boiled milk, fresh whole natural cow's milk, and from a pasteurized store-bought product. There are a lot of different recipes that can teach us how to make the most delicious, environmentally friendly cottage cheese by cooking and even using a non-thermal method.

How is cottage cheese made from milk?

Today, in the age of widespread distribution of genetically modified goods, the dangers of which are trumpeted from all over, trust in factory products is melting before our eyes. I become scared not only for myself, but also for my children.

That is why more and more people are striving to purchase a natural, rustic assortment of dairy products. Villagers and owners farm They deftly handle milk, preparing a lot of tasty and healthy products from it. However, many city residents don’t even realize that it’s quite simple to get the same cottage cheese from milk with your own hands, the main thing is to know the algorithm of this process.

So how can you make your own organic cottage cheese?

Homemade cottage cheese from village milk

First, you need to decide what kind of milk homemade cottage cheese is made from. Undoubtedly, homemade fresh milk from milking Burenka is the best raw material for curdling.

This cottage cheese turns out soft, tender, juicy and very nutritious. From 1 liter of milk yield you can get up to 300 g of fresh cottage cheese.

Even if homemade milk has been passed through a separator, there will still be return great solution for making low-fat cottage cheese.

Homemade cottage cheese from store-bought milk

However, very often city housewives are faced with the question: is it possible to make homemade cottage cheese from store-bought milk, because in city conditions it is not always possible to buy farm goods?

Yes, of course, you can resort to factory-made milk, it curdles perfectly and it doesn’t even matter so much whether the raw materials are fresh or boiled. At home, even from low-fat, pasteurized and lactose-free milk, you can make a good curd product.

To obtain 1 kg of cottage cheese you will need at least 4 liters of milk.

How does the curdling process occur?

Everything is simple here. First, the milk must be allowed to sour and curdle, that is, turn into curdled milk.

This can be done in various ways, starting from the banal keeping of the drink warm for about a day, and ending with the use of various natural starters (sour cream, kefir, bifidumbacterin), acids (citric acid, vinegar, lemon juice) and chemicals (calcium chloride).

Next, the fermented milk is subjected to thermal and cryo treatment, as a result of which the curdled milk breaks up into two fractions, one of which is cottage cheese. That's all science is. Everything looks quite easy and simple, even without visual videos lessons.

Let's now put theoretical knowledge into practice.

Ingredients

• — 5 l + -
• Kefir - 1 l + -

Making homemade cottage cheese from milk

This recipe for making homemade cottage cheese can rightfully be called classic or even traditional, because this is how this product has been prepared from time immemorial, mainly from natural cow's milk.

In order to make homemade cottage cheese, we will need both milk and kefir as a starter.

1. Pour the milk into a saucepan and put on fire. Heat it over medium heat with occasional stirring to prevent it from burning.
2. As soon as the milk boils, pour all the kefir into it and, continuing to cook, actively mix the entire mass from top to bottom so that the starter is evenly distributed throughout the entire volume of milk.
3. After a few minutes, you will notice that the milk has curdled and protein grains have risen to the top - this is the curd itself separated from the whey.
4. Now we need to filter it from the whey liquid, for which we line a sieve placed on an empty pan with gauze folded in two or three times and drain the entire contents of the pan through it.
5. The curd remained in the gauze, and the whey was glassed into a container. We tie the edges of the fabric in the form of a bag and hang it so that the excess whey completely drains from the curd.

The cottage cheese is ready! Now you can use it to make cheesecakes, stuff them, or simply mix them with sugar and raisins and eat them for breakfast.

Among the huge variety various options To obtain cottage cheese, of course, there is also an express recipe that will tell us how to quickly prepare cottage cheese at home from fresh and boiled milk from the store.

To do this, we don’t even need a starter, but we will use a pharmaceutical preparation called calcium chloride. This method is still in Soviet times mothers sought to provide their children with calcium supplements homemade kefir and cottage cheese.

These products are not only very tasty, but can also strengthen teeth and bones and normalize work nervous system and provide beneficial influence on the circulatory system.

Ingredients

• Pasteurized milk – 0.5 l;
• Calcium chloride 10% solution – 1.5 tbsp;

Preparation of calcined cottage cheese

The prepared products are just enough to prepare one serving of cottage cheese for a child.

• So, we heat the milk in a saucepan to 40 o C, after which, with vigorous stirring, we introduce a ten percent solution of calcium chloride into the liquid.
• Then bring the milk to a boil and cook until the mixture curdles. Next, remove the brew from the stove and, after cooling, place the curd on a strainer. After 15 minutes, the excess liquid will drain and the cottage cheese will be ready to eat.

IN this recipe you should strictly adhere to the stated proportions, because if you add too much CaCl 2 to the milk, the cottage cheese will taste bitter, which will definitely not appeal to either children or adults.

Absolutely healthy people can consume any dairy products without fear for their own health, however, for persons with lactose intolerance it is permissible dairy assortment very limited.

And if in megacities you can still find lactose-free products, then for small cities this is sometimes an outlandish product. And so people with such a diagnosis have no choice but to cook special cottage cheese at home on your own, fortunately today such milk is available in almost every major market.

And in order to make a product even more useful, we will resort to the help of bifidobacteria instead of sourdough, and we will not cook fermented milk, but will use a gentle cryo curdling technique.

Ingredients

• Lactose-free milk – 1 l;
• Bifidumbacterin – 2 ampoules;

Making homemade lactose-free cottage cheese

1. First, we need to bring the milk to a boil, then cool it to 38 o C and pour it into a thermos, where we also add diluted bifidumbacterin.
2. After 10-16 hours, a luxurious kefir, lactose-free and enriched with bifidobacteria, is formed in the thermos. To preserve all the benefits of this product, we use the freezer, not fire, to prepare cottage cheese.
3. So, pour the kefir into a bag and send it to freezer for 8 hours, and best of all at night. And in the morning we take out the bag, cut it, take out the ice floe and place it on a sieve lined with three layers of gauze. During the thawing process, the whey will flow through the holes, and the most tender, juicy and soft cottage cheese will remain in a gauze bag.

Yes, undoubtedly, this method takes a lot of time, but after enjoying the taste of this curd and having gained the lion's share of the benefits, we really understand that it is worth it and then making cottage cheese at home from any type of milk will become your constant activity in the kitchen.

To make the process more understandable, we have prepared step by step recipe with photo. You can safely add any of the proposed options to your culinary treasury and pamper your family with natural cottage cheese as in pure form, so with various additives. It is prepared from milk, kefir, yogurt and other dairy products.

Heat treatment will take place at not too high temperatures. As a rule, the technology uses a water bath. To do this, place the pan with raw materials in a bowl of water. At high temperature processing and increasing the duration of the process, the cottage cheese deteriorates its quality. It becomes hard and dry.

For cooking you will need the following utensils:

• Glass jar;
• 2 pans of different diameters;
• Colander or sieve.

Also, prepare the flap. natural fabric or gauze folded in several layers.

Before straining, wet the cloth (gauze) boiled water and squeeze it out, and then nothing will stick to it.

To make homemade cottage cheese, take milk from the cow or store-bought milk. In the first case, the yield is greater, the product is fattier, and from store-bought pasteurized milk it is softer and more tender.

When buying raw materials in a store, choose milk with a short shelf life and a fat content of at least 3.6%.

A by-product of making homemade cottage cheese is whey. She herself has nutritional value, and also behaves perfectly as a basis for dough. So don’t throw it away, but use it to make pies and okroshka.

How to make cottage cheese at home from homemade and store-bought milk: step-by-step recipe

Cottage cheese is a fermented milk product, it is obtained from sour milk, so the first stage of preparation is ripening. For this reason milk long-term storage It won’t work, it simply won’t turn sour. We take it in polyethylene (which, by the way, is cheaper). Be sure to look at the date of manufacture - only suitable for us fresh milk.

Note

You can skim farm milk, but if you want to boil fat cottage cheese, there is no need to do this.

Step-by-step preparation:

We talked about how to properly prepare delicious coarse grainy cottage cheese at home from whole sour milk, they gave a step-by-step recipe, but you can do without a water bath. The pan with curdled milk is simply placed on low heat and warmed up. Be sure to be careful not to burn. After curdling, proceed as described above.

From kefir: fresh and frozen

You can quickly make cottage cheese from kefir. The yield will be less than from yogurt, but the taste is no worse. We skip the ripening stage and immediately place the container with kefir on water bath. Don't forget to stir. The remaining whey can also be used, for example, to make pancakes or crumpets with it.

The heating temperature of kefir should not exceed 60°C, otherwise the cottage cheese will turn out hard.

Perfect for making homemade cottage cheese from kefir in a water bath. glass jar, just don’t forget to put a towel on the bottom of the pan so that it doesn’t burst when heated. The process will be similar to sterilizing canned food, with the difference that you do not need to bring it to a boil. The jar is convenient because there is no need to stir the mixture, and readiness can be easily monitored by the separation of the whey from the curdled mass. It is very visible through the glass.

A completely different technology is used for cottage cheese from frozen kefir. In this case heat treatment is not carried out.

Cooking steps:

1. Place a pack of kefir in the freezer.
2. After it freezes, remove it from the freezer and remove the packaging.
3. Place the frozen kefir in a colander lined with a damp cloth or gauze folded in 2-3 layers. Place a colander over a bowl or pan.
4. Leave to defrost at room temperature for at least 5 hours. The time depends on the air temperature.
5. When all the ice has thawed, strain out the remaining mixture on the gauze and transfer it to a glass or plastic container.

Cottage cheese from pre-frozen kefir is dietary, tender and soft, without grains. The consistency is similar to cream. The taste depends on the quality of the original product.

If the room is cool, the defrosting process may take up to 10 hours. It is convenient to put the bag in the freezer in the evening, and in the morning put kefir ice on cheesecloth. Then fresh homemade cottage cheese will be ready for dinner.

In a slow cooker: with sour cream and sourdough

In a slow cooker, cottage cheese is prepared from kefir, fermented baked milk or sour cow's or goat milk. If you have fresh milk and sour cream, then using a miracle saucepan you can also make delicious product, but it will take more time, the process will take about 12 hours, and possibly longer.

We will need such products;

• Milk – 10 glasses;
• Sour cream – ½ cup.

Preparation:

1. Pour milk into the multicooker bowl.
2. Add sour cream, stir. To make this easier, dilute the sour cream in a small amount of milk, and then pour the liquid mixture into a bowl.
3. Set the “Warming” mode and leave for half an hour.
4. After 2 hours, turn on the heating again, but for 15 minutes.
5. It is more convenient to leave the cottage cheese overnight, then in the morning the yogurt will be ready.
6. To curdle at the final stage, turn on the multicooker in the “Warming” mode for 1 hour.
7. Now all that remains is to pour the thick mass onto cheesecloth. First fold it several times and place it in a colander, and place it over the pan.
8. Wait until all the whey has drained.
9. Do not try to speed up the process by stirring the mixture with a spoon. Leave it alone, or, as a last resort, pull up the edges of the gauze alternately on all sides.
10. As usual, transfer the finished cottage cheese to suitable dishes and put it in the refrigerator.

Instead of sour cream, you can use any fermented milk product: kefir, fermented baked milk, yogurt.

With special starter cultures, you can prepare a tasty and healthy fermented milk product in 8 hours. Excellent results are obtained with BakZdrav starter. The instructions included with it are very detailed. In a slow cooker this is done like this:

1. In chilled boiled milk add starter, stir.
2. Pour the mixture into the multicooker bowl, turn on the “Yoghurt” mode. If it is not there, then set the temperature to 35-40°C and leave for 8 hours.
3. Using a spatula, cut the dense layer directly in the bowl into rectangles with a side of 2 cm (do not mix, just pick), set the temperature to 60°C, cook for 15 minutes.
4. Strain through cheesecloth and cool.

Place in the refrigerator for at least 2 hours, after which you can serve. Children really like this cottage cheese. It can be stored in the refrigerator for no more than 3 days. If you add berries, fruits or raisins to it and pour syrup over it, you will get a wonderful dessert.

Homemade cottage cheese with calcium chloride

If you need to increase the calcium content, then use the pharmaceutical preparation calcium chloride 10%. It is sold in ampoules and bottles. Take precautions when using the ampoule.

To prevent glass from accidentally getting into the product, draw the drug with a syringe and a needle.

• Milk – 300 ml;
• Calcium chloride – 1 tsp.

How to cook:

1. Boil milk
2. Add calcium chloride, after which the milk will begin to curdle.
3. Place on cheesecloth and strain.

This technology achieves two goals. Firstly, the preparation is very fast, no preparatory activities not required. Secondly, cottage cheese is enriched with calcium, which is necessary for the normal functioning of the body.

Calcified cottage cheese is often prescribed to children; it is useful for older people as a preventive measure for osteoporosis.

We have given several options on how to prepare cottage cheese at home. This can be done quickly using calcium chloride or without heat treatment by freezing and then thawing kefir. A very tasty and tender cottage cheese is made in a slow cooker. And there is also classic way which our grandmothers used. In each case, the consistency will be different, and the taste will also be different, so you need to try and choose what your family likes.

Content:

Cottage cheese is a perfect food product that combines everything beneficial properties 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 preparing cottage cheese

The modern method of preparing cottage cheese at home, which cannot be said about the industry, has not undergone any changes at all and is no different from the process that our ancestors used. Still, this nutritious fermented milk product is obtained from well-heated curdled milk (sour milk), placed in a linen bag to separate the dense part (cottage cheese) from the liquid part (whey).

Classic cottage cheese recipe at home

There is an ideal “long-lasting recipe” when mining 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 ripening, when under the influence of temperature factors the whey is separated from the curdled milk due to the action of living lactic acid bacteria.

To get 1 kg of cottage cheese, prepare:

• 3 liters of fresh, preferably homemade, milk;
• 2 spacious containers: one larger, the other smaller;
• colander;
• clean cotton paper cloth or thick gauze.

1. Pour the milk into a sealed container, do not disturb it, leave it to sour for a couple of days (the speed of fermentation will depend on temperature factors).
2. Afterwards, place the container with the fermented, already dense, mixture on slow fire to a water bath. Cook, stirring gently, for 15-20 minutes until curds form.
3. As soon as the slightly heated mass separates into cottage cheese and whey, leave it alone until it cools completely.
4. Next, prepare a spacious dish, place a colander on it, which is covered with a thick, clean cotton cloth (a sieve is not suitable for such manipulation).
5. Pour the mixture onto the prepared cloth, tie it in a knot and hang it over the prepared container so that the separated whey can drain into it. As soon as the whey stops dripping, the cottage cheese is ready.

How to make cottage cheese quickly

To get 200 g of cottage cheese you will need the following ingredients:

• 500 ml milk;
• 500 ml kefir.

1. Pour the milk into a container of sufficient capacity (at least 1.5 liters) and bring it to a boil.
2. As soon as the milk begins to boil, reduce the heat and immediately begin pouring kefir into the boiling liquid in a thin stream.
3. Then add a little heat and begin to slowly stir the mass.
4. When the process of coagulation (separation of whey from protein) begins, turn off the heat, cover the dish with a lid and leave the mixture alone for a while (the curdling process will still occur in the cooling workpiece).
5. Next, do everything as usual: throw the cooled mass onto thick gauze and, tying it in a knot, hang it to drain the whey.

Subtleties of making cottage cheese at home

Whatever milk you initially choose for making cottage cheese, there are certain nuances, without knowledge of which you may end up with a low-quality product:

• Milk souring should be natural, without your intervention and under no circumstances in the refrigerator.
• When heating already sour milk, the main thing is not to overheat it, since if the curdled milk is exposed to excessive temperature, the curd 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 temperature while heating it in a water bath desired temperature- at the end you will get a rubber mass that tastes completely different from cottage cheese.
• The green color of the whey, which appears when sour milk is heated, indicates that the curdled milk has “ripened” sufficiently.

It is worth considering that the final mass of the prepared product will also differ: the yield of cottage cheese from three liters homemade milk will be much more (about 1 kg) than from the same amount store-bought (600-700 g).

Types of cottage cheese

Like the rest fermented milk products According to production technology, cottage cheese is usually classified. With this product, this is done according to the method of preparation (separate and traditional) and according to fat content.

What kind of cottage cheese is there?

• low fat (% fat up to 1.8);
• low-fat (fat content less than 3%);
• bold (9%);
• classic (from 4-18%);
• fatty (% fat content not less than 18).

With the separate method, grain-free skim cottage cheese is obtained, which is prepared from separated skim milk. Using this method, by adding cream, you can get cottage cheese of any fat content.

Making cottage cheese from milk

The prepared mixture is mixed and placed in a warm place for 8-10 hours. Afterwards, the curd curd is separated from the whey. Ready cottage cheese You can flavor it with sour cream, if you want a product with more calories, cream or fruit.

Homemade kefir cottage cheese

An interesting recipe for making cottage cheese from frozen kefir is considered: place a lump of sour milk frozen in the freezer at room temperature in a fabric bag. A few hours later, after the process of separating the liquid part from the solid part is completed, you will receive the long-awaited tasty product.

How to make low-fat cottage cheese at home

Pasteurized low-fat or one percent milk is used for this process. The entire preparation procedure is similar to obtaining cottage cheese from regular milk, the only difference is that the ripening of such a product naturally will take much longer, so to speed up the process, starters are used in the form low-fat yogurt or kefir. To sour one liter of milk you will need 2-3 tbsp. l. sourdough

How to make grainy cottage cheese

To make this cottage cheese at home, you will need the following products:

• 1 liter of low-fat milk;
• 1.5 tbsp. l. calcium chloride;
• 6 tbsp. l. cream (the fat content of the prepared cottage cheese will depend on the initial % fat content of the cream);
• salt to taste.

1. In a non-enamel container, heat the milk well, almost bringing it to a boil.
2. Then, turning off the heat, add calcium chloride and mix thoroughly.
3. The composition must stand for a while so that the curd grains separate from the liquid.
4. Separate the curds from the whey.
5. Salt the already dry product and add cream. Homemade granular cottage cheese is ready.

Making cheese from cottage cheese

To do this you will need the following products:

• 200 g homemade fat cottage cheese;
• 200 ml milk;
• a mixture of one egg and 50 g of butter;
• 0.5 tsp. soda;
• salt, spices to taste.

1. Place homemade cottage cheese (it is better if it is grainy and has a low whey content) in a bowl, pour milk over it and bring the whole mixture to a boil.
2. Once boiling, reduce the heat, stirring gently, making sure that the entire contents of the pan are heated evenly.
3. As soon as the whey separates from the bowl, discard the resulting lump of curd in a colander or thick layer of gauze.
4. Dry curd mass transfer to a cauldron in which you will further cook the cheese.
5. Add a mixture of butter, eggs, soda and salt to the semi-finished product. Stir.
6. Next, cook the whole mass over low heat for 5-8 minutes, stirring constantly.
7. It is easy to determine the readiness of the cheese: it will stretch, become sticky, viscous and begin to lag behind the walls of the cauldron.
8. Pour over hot cheese into the prepared form and leave to harden.