Cheese is one of the varieties of brine cheeses made from milk and characterized by the absence of a crust, a peculiar consistency and taste. If desired, you can make feta cheese at home; this does not require special skills or knowledge of technology.
Is it possible to cook feta cheese at home
The history of the appearance of feta cheese says that for the first time people tried it in one of the eastern countries, having received the product quite by accident as a result of sour milk. On the way of the caravan, the sour mass was transformed into cheese as a result of continuous beating in a vessel in the rhythm of the movement of the camels. I liked the taste of the resulting cheese and from that moment they began to prepare it on purpose.
There are various recipes for cooking and serving feta cheese at home, and each country has its own. You can see both classic, based on fermented milk, and non-traditional, more adapted for residents of megacities with their accelerated pace of life. To prepare cheese according to one of the recipes, you will need:
- 2 liters of milk;
- 6 eggs;
- 400 g sour cream of any fat content;
- 200 g of kefir;
- 2 tbsp. salt without a slide.
The fat content of the feta cheese is directly related to the fat content of the milk used, the fatter the latter, the more tender the feta cheese. From this amount of milk, about 800 g of the finished product is obtained.
Cooking feta cheese
Milk must be brought to a boil, add sour cream, kefir, eggs and salt to it, bring the mixture to a boil with continuous stirring and cook until the whey separates. This can take up to 5 minutes or more. When this happens, pour the resulting mass into a colander, covered with several layers of gauze, and wait for the whey to drain.
The shape of the future cheese is directly related to the shape of the colander itself. Then the mass must be wrapped in cheesecloth, removed from the colander and put under the press. The weight of the load should be at least a kilogram or two; absolutely any object can be used as oppression.
In 5-6 hours, the feta cheese will take shape, after which it will need to be put in the refrigerator for several hours. It would be correct not to free the cheese from the gauze in order to prevent it from drying out, after which it will be ready to be served.
To obtain a denser piece of cheese, the weight of the oppression should be increased.
What else you should know
To obtain less salty feta cheese, it is enough to reduce the amount of salt. Any milk can be used for cooking, from real fatty and homemade milk to ordinary packaged milk. If you want to get a more spicy and aromatic feta cheese, you can add a clove of garlic passed through a press and chopped dill during the cooking process.
