Homemade foods are much nicer than store-bought foods. After all, the composition of homemade food is always known, their freshness does not cause concern, unlike grocery stores. For example, curd cheese is a perishable product. To make it suitable for food for a long time, manufacturers add all kinds of additives to it that prevent spoilage of food. As a result, the product can stand on the shelves for months. What kind of freshness can we talk about?
Curd cheese is a very tasty product, snacks with it are among the first to "fly away" from the table. But since good quality cheese is not cheap in stores, not everyone can afford to buy it all the time. But there is a way out: you can cook this dish at home with your own hands. The cost price of such a dish will be several times lower, and the taste and usefulness will be several times higher than the store ones.
There are many recipes for making curd cheeses, if followed, you can get products that are different from each other, not only in taste, but also in consistency. Therefore, if you want to cook soft creamy, hard classic, melted with various additives or other curd cheeses, I advise you to familiarize yourself with simple recipes.
Curd cheese: tips for cooking
Most curd cheeses are cooked within 30-40 minutes, most of the time (up to a day) is spent on cooling and solidifying the product. And so that the process of cooking the food goes like clockwork, and the product itself turns out to be tasty and as healthy as possible, it is important to adhere to certain rules for its preparation:
- for the preparation of curd cheese, you should use only fresh homemade cottage cheese of medium and low fat content or perishable crumbly low-fat store cottage cheese (curd mass and curd product will not work);
- cook the dish, preferably in a thick-bottomed container with a non-stick coating;
- to give the cheese a rounded shape, you should use equipment specially designed for this, if it is not there, you can use improvised kitchen utensils - a colander (sieve) and gauze.
Processed curd cheese
The easiest processed cheese recipe. When preparing a product, no special skills and abilities are required.
Ingredients:
- 1 kg of medium fat cottage cheese;
- a tablespoon of Italian herbs (or any aromatic seasoning to your taste);
- 2 eggs;
- 2 tsp soda;
- 200 grams of butter;
- a teaspoon of salt (5 grams).
Recipe:
In a container, mix cottage cheese (you can wipe it a couple of times through a sieve), soda, butter and eggs. Beat these ingredients with a blender until smooth.
If a stewpan with a thin bottom is used for cooking, then place it on the steam bath and boil the curd and egg mass until it becomes viscous and shiny. Achieve complete dissolution of the curd lumps.
Add salt and seasoning to the prepared hot mass, mix well and pour into molds or into one large mold. Leave the product to cool for three to five hours.
Light curd cheese
Ingredients:
- 500 grams of low-fat cottage cheese (2% is suitable);
- 5-7 grams of salt;
- 2-3 cloves of garlic;
- half a glass of sour cream 10%;
- a small bunch of dill or parsley.
Recipe:
Chop the herbs and garlic as small as possible, grind these ingredients in a mortar. Mix cottage cheese with sour cream, salt and a mixture of herbs and garlic. Leave the curd cheese at room temperature for an hour, then refrigerate. Store in a tightly closed container.
The product is suitable for those who follow the figure. After all, the calorie content of the food is only 120-150 kcal, depending on the fat content of the ingredients used.
Dairy-free curd cheese
Most cheese recipes use milk, but you can cook the dish without this product. Cooking according to the recipe below takes only 30 minutes, but the food should be infused for at least eight hours.
Ingredients:
- 4 chicken egg yolks;
- 10 grams of salt;
- 1 kg of cottage cheese;
- a teaspoon of salt;
- 100 grams of butter (with a fat content of more than 75%).
Recipe:
Melt the butter in the microwave or water bath. Mix cottage cheese with baking soda, salt and yolks.
Place the melted butter and curd mass in a thick-bottomed container and boil the mixture until the grains of curd dissolve (15-20 minutes).
Pour the mass into a mold, after cooling, put it in the refrigerator for at least three hours.
Hard curd cheese
The cheese according to this recipe turns out to be very tasty, moderately salty. Its downside is that it takes two days or more to ripen. However, if everything is done correctly, then the taste of the product will not disappoint you.
Ingredients:
- a kilogram of cottage cheese (homemade any fat content);
- liter of milk;
- 100 grams of butter;
- a teaspoon of baking soda and the same amount of salt;
- 3 eggs (preferably homemade).
Step-by-step cooking recipe:
Grind the cottage cheese several times through a sieve, until the product is completely homogeneous. Put the milk on the fire, as it boils, put the curd mass into it and boil for a couple of minutes. Do not leave the stove, stir the mixture constantly so that it does not burn.
Throw the curd mass into a colander, after covering it with several layers of gauze. Leave it on for a few minutes.
As soon as the water stops flowing from the curd, place it in a metal thick-bottomed container, add salt, soda, eggs, butter to it and mix. Heat the mixture to 80-90 degrees and immediately remove from heat.
Transfer the hot cheese to an enamel saucepan lined with cheesecloth, set the oppression on it. Important: the hardness of the cheese depends on the hardness of the oppression.
After three to five hours, drain the liquid released from the cheese, change the press to a heavier one. After a day or two, the food can be eaten.
Curd cheese made from kefir and sour cream
In order not to spoil the cheese when preparing it from these products, it is important to observe the proportions of kefir and sour cream. The main condition is that these ingredients must be equally divided.
Ingredients:
- 500 ml sour cream;
- 500 ml of kefir (the fatter, the tastier and more satisfying the cheese itself will turn out);
- a teaspoon of salt;
- a teaspoon of any spicy herb to taste.
Recipe:
Measure out all food using a measuring cup and measuring spoon. Stir sour cream, the most common kefir and salt. Cover the sieve with gauze in several layers, then pour the prepared mixture into it. Tie the cheesecloth in a knot, put oppression on the cheese and put it in the refrigerator for a couple of days so that the excess liquid is glass.
Two days later, add a teaspoon of any spice to the finished curd mass, mix. Roll a sausage with a diameter of four to five centimeters out of cottage cheese and wrap it in foil. After a couple of hours, the cheese can be eaten.
Important: the addition of spices significantly improves the taste of the cheese; without herbs, the product has an unexpressed taste and specific aroma.
Ryazhenka curd cheese
The cheese made according to this recipe tastes quite interesting. The main plus of the recipe is that only one ingredient is required to make cheese - fermented baked milk.
Recipe:
Pour a liter of fermented baked milk into an enamel saucepan, heat the product to 50 degrees over low heat and immediately remove it from the stove. In no case do not heat the fermented baked milk above the specified temperature, otherwise you will simply ruin it, since cheese will not work out of it.
Pour warm fermented baked milk into a plastic container and place in the freezer for several hours. With a sharp knife, chop the frozen product into pieces of 2-3 centimeters, transfer to a cotton towel and hang over a saucepan or basin. After 36-48 hours, the cheese can be eaten.
Advice: if you need to get a denser cheese, then you need to keep it suspended for two days. During this time, a sufficient amount of liquid will drain from it and the food will turn out to be much thicker.
