Homemade cottage cheese. The best recipes with step-by-step photos
Probably everyone has heard about the health benefits of dairy products. Such food is an excellent source of calcium and easily digestible protein, contains many vitamins and other elements necessary for the normal functioning of organs and systems. It’s not for nothing that many pediatricians advise introducing milk into the baby’s diet as early as six to eight months. Unfortunately, it is difficult to purchase really high-quality dairy products in modern stores, but many of them can be prepared independently. Let's clarify how to make cottage cheese at home quickly.
How to make cottage cheese quickly and easily?
To prepare this dairy product you will need a minimum of ingredients. There is no need to use pepsin or purchase starter cultures; you just need to stock up on one liter of fresh milk, half a teaspoon of salt and three tablespoons of lemon.
In a fairly large saucepan, combine the milk and salt. Bring this mixture almost to a boil, but do not let it boil. Turn off the stove and pour lemon juice into the milk, stirring. As a result, the milk will curdle into flakes. Leave it for five to seven minutes, during which time stir several times. If you want the finished cottage cheese to have a particularly pleasant creamy taste, add a tablespoon of heavy cream to the mixture.
Line a bowl with gauze folded in two or three layers. Pour the curd mixture onto it. Carefully tie the edges of the gauze with a bag and lift it up. Place in a colander or even hang to drain excess liquid (whey). The more time the cottage cheese releases liquid, the drier and denser it will be as a result.
In general, it will take you forty-five to sixty minutes to prepare juicy, tasty, tender and very healthy cottage cheese. Write down this method as the simplest and fastest recipe for tender homemade cottage cheese.
How to quickly make cottage cheese so that it is very, very tasty?
To prepare quick homemade cottage cheese, you need to prepare two liters of kefir (2.5% fat content) and two liters of milk (also 2.5% fat content).
Rinse a suitable size pan with cold water. Pour milk and kefir into it. Stir the resulting mixture. Cover the pan with a lid and place it on the stove on the largest burner. Cook on low heat for half an hour.
Wait until the mixture in the pan begins to separate the clear whey. Stir the future cottage cheese with a spoon, carefully turning it from bottom to top. Cover again and leave for another twenty minutes. But under no circumstances let the whey boil.
Leave the future cottage cheese covered until it cools completely, then carefully remove it with a slotted spoon and place it in a colander. Leave in the refrigerator for three hours.
For taste, add condensed milk to the cottage cheese before use, but you don’t have to do this or add any other ingredients.
A slightly longer option for preparing homemade cottage cheese
To prepare such cottage cheese, you should stock up on one and a half liters of milk and a couple of tablespoons of sour cream.
Combine a liter of milk with sour cream in a suitable sized jar. Leave it in a fairly warm place so that the milk sours.
Then pour half a liter of fresh milk into a saucepan, bring almost to a boil and pour the prepared mixture of sour milk into it. Stir well and simmer over low heat for fifteen minutes. Then cover with a lid and leave until cool.
Pour the resulting mixture into a colander, covering it with gauze. Hang the bag with the future cottage cheese and leave it for an hour or two to drain the whey.
Quick kefir curd
If you do not need classic crumbly cottage cheese, but soft cottage cheese or even curd cream, pay attention to this simple recipe. To prepare such a product, it is worth preparing kefir. Add salt or sugar to it, if desired, based on your taste preferences. Pour the kefir into a suitable container and place it in the freezer until it freezes completely.
Place frozen kefir in gauze folded in several layers and hang. As it defrosts, all the kefir whey will drain out of it, and you will be left with a delicious soft curd. If you put frozen kefir on a sieve rather than hanging it, you will get a wonderful curd cream.
Another recipe for “lazy” cottage cheese
This recipe is a variation on the theme of using acid to speed up the souring of milk. You need to prepare three liters of ordinary store-bought milk (but not pasteurized) and two hundred milliliters of vinegar.
Pour the milk into a clean saucepan and place over medium heat. After the milk has warmed up well, but has not yet boiled, pour the prepared vinegar into it while stirring constantly. As you stir, you will be able to see the milk begin to flake out. Reduce the heat to minimum power, cover the container with a napkin and leave to warm up. After about three to four hours, you will notice that the round curd pancake will sink a little, and its surface will begin to become covered with whey. At this point, you need to turn off the heat under the pan. Cool the mixture and pour it into a colander, covering it with gauze folded in several layers. Leave for half an hour or an hour, then squeeze thoroughly in a gauze bag and use the finished cottage cheese for its intended purpose.
Homemade cottage cheese does not contain preservatives or stabilizers; it does not last very long, but at the same time it has wonderful taste. From the proposed recipes, you can choose the option that suits you.
Making cottage cheese at home is not at all difficult. It is prepared from milk, store-bought or farm milk, with the fat content of your choice. You can also make cottage cheese from ready-made kefir. For children, you can make cottage cheese from baby milk and kefir.
What is the advantage of homemade cottage cheese over industrial cottage cheese and why prepare cottage cheese yourself, waste time on it, if you can just go in and buy, choosing cottage cheese products to your liking in the store? Everything is simple here: you do not add additives and preservatives that are unnecessary for our body. In addition, at home you can prepare the amount of cottage cheese that you need at the moment. If you have children in your family, then with some simple technology you can always have fresh cottage cheese.
You can also make various dishes from homemade cottage cheese.
How to make cottage cheese from yogurt
Curdled milk is the easiest fermented milk product to prepare. In order to get curdled milk, you only need to take milk and put it in a warm place. To speed up the formation of curdled milk, you can add to milk: per 1 liter - 100 ml of kefir or 1 tablespoon of sour cream or yogurt.
After the milk turns into curdled milk, you need to separate the curd mass from the whey. To do this, you need to pour the curdled milk into a bag made of several layers of gauze or other linen, then hang it. This will separate the curds from the whey, which will take about half a day.
To speed up the process of preparing cottage cheese from yogurt, it must be heated. Do not bring the product to a boil or boil! Then you should cool the mass and place it in a colander with gauze or other fabric. Apply pressure (press) to get drier cottage cheese. You can also hang it in a gauze or linen bag.
The longer the curd is left hanging or under pressure, the denser and drier it turns out.
How to prepare calcined cottage cheese
It is very simple to prepare such cottage cheese at home. Cottage cheese prepared in this way has low acidity and is especially suitable for dietary and baby food.
We will need:
- Milk – 2 liters,
- Calcium lactic acid – 3 teaspoons (12 g).
Preparation:
Calcium lactic acid is sold in the pharmacy in powder form. It must be dissolved in a small amount of water, for example, 3-4 tablespoons of water. Bring fresh milk to a boil, turn off the heat and add dissolved calcium lactic acid while stirring constantly.
At the same time, the milk curdles. This mass must be cooled and strained through cheesecloth or other fabric to separate the whey from the curd. The cottage cheese can be hung so that it drains better, or placed under pressure. From 2 liters of milk you will get 300-350 grams of cottage cheese.
How to make cottage cheese at home
2 ways to make cottage cheese from kefir
Warm way
Kefir must be placed in a warm place for faster separation of whey. When the whey begins to separate, place the container with kefir in a water bath and heat it for better and faster separation of the whey from the curd mass. Then throw the mass into a gauze or fabric bag and hang it so that the excess whey is drained.
You can use a faster method, which involves directly heating the cottage cheese, for example, in a saucepan over low heat, until a curd mass and whey form. This mass should not be brought to a boil.
Cold way
Place 1 liter of kefir in a bag or package in the freezer for 2-3 days, then remove the frozen kefir from the bag. Place it in a colander with gauze and wait until the whey drains and you are left with tender and very tasty cottage cheese.
Types of cottage cheese: skyr, irimshik, ezgey
These are ancient world culinary recipes for quick cooking of cottage cheese.
Skyr
Combine freshly prepared yogurt in a 1:1 ratio with fresh milk brought to a boil. For example, bring 1 liter of milk to a boil and pour in 1 liter of curdled milk, leave the mixture on low heat for 3 minutes. As soon as the milk curd separates from the whey, remove from heat and drain the curd in a colander.
Irimshik
It is prepared in the same way as skyr, but you can boil the mixture of milk and yogurt for about 5 minutes, the proportions of yogurt and fresh milk are 1:2.
Ezhegey
The proportions of yogurt and fresh milk are 2:1, it is prepared in the same way as skyr, but without boiling: when yogurt gets into the milk, it immediately separates the whey from the curd curd. After adding curdled milk to the milk, turn off the heat, allow to cool and drain the finished curd into a colander.
Many of you know that cottage cheese is one of the healthiest products, and this product should definitely be present in every person’s diet. Of course, if you strive to be healthy, beautiful and young.
There is an opinion that the word “cottage cheese” from Old Slavic is translated as “milk made solid.” Often buying cottage cheese in our stores we are left disappointed. But there is always a way out. So you need to make cottage cheese yourself, it’s actually very simple. Today I want to tell you how to make homemade cottage cheese from milk, so that it tastes like grandma’s.
And so you will learn the secret of how to properly store cottage cheese so that it is always fresh and tasty, or how to refresh and make slightly sour cottage cheese palatable. Also from today’s article you will learn how to properly prepare cottage cheese for your child. And I will share with you a new recipe for making cottage cheese in the oven at home.
The most important secret in making cottage cheese is fresh and high-quality milk, so that the cottage cheese turns out like grandma’s, it is better to use homemade milk rather than store-bought, but if it is not possible to purchase home-made milk, then we will use store-bought milk, how to choose it correctly, and How to understand whether it is natural or not, look at the video.
How to prepare cottage cheese for a child at home?
Cottage cheese is a welcome guest on the children's menu. Every mother knows about its benefits for the growing child’s body.
But nutritionists do not recommend giving children under three years of age “adult” cottage cheese purchased at the market or in a store. And what could be tastier than homemade cottage cheese, prepared by the caring hands of a mother and seasoned with her love!
Therefore, today you will learn three simple ways to make cottage cheese at home for your child.
Method No. 1
Boil 1 liter. milk, preferably rustic, real milk. Add 2 tbsp to the cooled milk. spoons of sourdough and mix well. Pour this mixture into a thermos or place in a warm place. After 12 hours, the sour milk must be heated in a water bath until the whey begins to separate. Immediately remove the pan from the heat and discard the cottage cheese in a colander or sieve - as convenient for you. As soon as all the liquid has drained, the healthy cottage cheese is ready to eat!
Method No. 2
Take baby kefir. 0.5 liter will be enough. Place it in a water bath and watch the water. To make tender cottage cheese, it should not boil too much. After 15 minutes, you need to throw the resulting mass onto cheesecloth to drain the whey. Let the cottage cheese cool - and you're done!
Method No. 3
Take 0.5 l. milk and bring to a boil. Add 10 ml. calcium chloride (one ampoule) into a saucepan and immediately set it aside. By squeezing the whey, you get calcined cottage cheese. The less liquid remains in the cottage cheese, the higher the concentration of protein and fat will be in it.
It is advisable to feed babies up to one year old with freshly prepared cottage cheese. If there is a need for storage, remember that the main enemy of cottage cheese is air. Therefore, in the refrigerator, keep it in an enamel or glass container with a lid. For older children, the product can be stored for two days.
Use homemade cottage cheese in your diet every day, and let your child grow healthy and strong!
How to properly store cottage cheese.
Cottage cheese quickly deteriorates: it turns sour when warm, and mold appears in it when damp. Therefore, it must be kept in the refrigerator, and no more than two to three days. It is best to place it in a glass or porcelain bowl with a lid, or first wrap the cottage cheese in parchment paper.
To extend the shelf life of cottage cheese, you can place it in an enamel pan, adding a couple of pieces of sugar. In case of spontaneous souring of cottage cheese, it cannot be directly eaten due to the possible presence of pathogenic bacteria. You need to make cheesecakes or other curd products from it that undergo heat treatment.
If the cottage cheese has become too sour, you can add fresh milk to it in equal quantities and leave for an hour. Then, throwing it onto a strainer, let the water drain and put a weight on it. After this, the cottage cheese will become less sour.
How I make delicious cottage cheese in the oven.
When preparing cottage cheese at home, I have personally verified that it never turns out perfect. Either you overcook it, the cottage cheese becomes grains, or you don’t cook it enough, and it turns out to be a mess without taste.
Having set a goal, the real correct way to prepare cottage cheese at home was found.
We take a jar of sour homemade milk, after removing the layer of cream, since the cottage cheese will be fatty and tasty. Place the jar in any enamel bowl or ladle or tray so that it is deeper.
For what? Just in case the can cracks. (don't worry, this is a very rare occurrence)
Place the tray with the jar on a wire rack in a cold oven, no matter whether it is electric or gas.
We turn on the oven to the lowest temperature; on my electric oven the lowest scale is 50 degrees.
To begin with, set it for 10 minutes and observe when the curd mass in the jar rises and the whey layer is two to three fingers below. I keep a liter jar for about 15 minutes, constantly feeling if the jar is warm, then you can turn up the temperature to make it faster. But this is when you have a three-liter jar and don’t want to wait 30 minutes.
When the whey has disappeared, turn off the oven and do not touch it until the contents have cooled.
Well, after that, you know, you can hang it in a colander with gauze to drain the liquid.
And also, if you like your cottage cheese drier, keep it in the oven longer so that the whey comes out more. Adjust yourself.
Making cottage cheese from milk at home is a completely simple process. And the resulting product will be both healthier and tastier than cottage cheese purchased at the market or in a supermarket.
Ingredients:
3 liters of milk poured into a glass jar;
- pot;
- colander;
- gauze.
How to make cottage cheese from milk at home:
To make good cottage cheese, it is best to use natural homemade or farm milk. The pasteurized store-bought product probably won't work. The quality and purity of milk should not cause you any doubts, because milk cannot be boiled - good cottage cheese does not tolerate high temperatures.
A jar of fresh milk does not need to be placed in the refrigerator, it should be in a warm place. After 2-3 days, the milk should turn into curdled milk. When the curdled milk is ready, you will be able to see vertical “movements”. They are formed by bubbles of carbon dioxide rising upward. Ready yogurt resembles jelly, easily separating from the walls of the jar. It is extremely important to ensure that the milk does not acidify, otherwise the cottage cheese will turn out very sour.
If the milk was of high quality, then a fairly large amount of cream will form on the surface of the resulting curdled milk, which needs to be skimmed off. The more of them left, the fattier the cottage cheese will be. This is how you can achieve the desired fat content of the final product.
The jar of curdled milk must be placed in a saucepan, which is set on fire (very low) and on the bottom of which a thick cloth folded in several layers has been previously placed. You need to pour water into the pan so that it reaches the middle of the jar.
To warm up the curdled milk better, you should take a knife with a long blade and cut it crosswise. The jar must be covered with a small piece of gauze. The curdled milk should be in the pan until the water begins to boil, but under no circumstances boil. This process will take approximately an hour. After this, you need to turn off the fire and leave the jar of yogurt, from which the whey has already separated, in hot water for another 10 minutes.
In the meantime, you need to prepare a container into which the whey will be poured, and a colander covered with a fairly large piece of gauze, folded 3-4 times, or a thick cotton cloth. The cottage cheese will remain in it. You need to carefully shake out the contents of the jar in order to preserve the integrity of the product as much as possible, because the larger the pieces of curdled milk, the tastier the cottage cheese will be.
Next, the edges of the gauze need to be lifted up, tied and hung over the container into which the whey will drain. You can tie gauze with cottage cheese, for example, to the handle of a kitchen drawer, and place the whey container on a stool under it.
You cannot squeeze the cottage cheese with your hands, because the structure of the product may be damaged and it will turn out dry and grainy. The serum should drain on its own. The cottage cheese will be ready when the gauze completely stops dripping.
From 3 liters of milk you can get from 500 to 800 g of cottage cheese. This depends on the fat content of the milk and the moisture content of the final product. Cottage cheese prepared according to this recipe turns out to be quite dense, but not dry, moderately fatty and with a very pleasant, milky, not sour smell.
From this homemade cottage cheese you can make delicious homemade cheesecakes according to our recipe!
Cottage cheese is a unique dairy product from which you can prepare a lot of 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;
- 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 the nervous system, and preventing metabolism. It has been proven that this product promotes the generation of growth hormone, which is important in childhood and adolescence. Studies prove that cottage cheese burns excess fat and helps with weight loss. It also helps build muscle mass, which is why it is widely popular among weightlifters and is an excellent preventative against atherosclerosis.
Cottage cheese has also been used externally: it is used as compresses for blows, cuts, bruises, and burns. As a 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 largely not been proven, except perhaps from excessive consumption of the fattiest varieties, which contain large amounts of animal fat and cholesterol.
We are talking about a quality homemade product. 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, squeezing and removing excess liquid. For production, a regular saucepan and stove, water bath, multicooker or microwave are suitable. There is also a cold production method without heat treatment.
In order to make curdled milk from fresh 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 are using homemade cow's or goat's milk rather than store-bought 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 destroys beneficial vitamin C. Three days are enough for complete aging under such conditions.
You should not keep the yogurt mixture in the refrigerator, since the milk does not ferment, but simply deteriorates over time.
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 saucepan with 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 yogurt is poured into a glass or porcelain container with high sides, it is placed in the microwave oven in an open form, and 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.