Making cheese yourself is not that difficult. To do this, you need to choose the right ingredients and strictly follow the recipe. Homemade cheese is both a tasty and healthy dish that allows you to use your favorite product, prepared without the use of preservatives and dyes.
Classic homemade cheese
For cooking you will need:
- cottage cheese - 1 kg;
- milk - 1 l;
- butter - 120 g;
- eggs - 2 pcs;
- soda - 2-3 tsp;
- salt - 1 tsp
First, pour the milk into a large saucepan and bring to a simmer over low heat. Then put the cottage cheese in the milk and, stirring, cook for 4-5 minutes until the whey separates. Take a colander and cover it with clean gauze folded in 2 layers and pre-moistened with water. Strain the mixture through cheesecloth into a separate saucepan. Let the serum drain, then tie the cheesecloth tightly and hang over the sink to drain the excess liquid.
Take softened butter and beat it with yolks from two eggs. Add salt, baking soda and mix thoroughly. In the resulting mixture, add cottage cheese, mix.
Then take a large saucepan and pour some water into it, bring to a boil. Build a water bath by placing a smaller pan on top, in which you put the resulting curd mass. Cook the mixture in a water bath for about 10 minutes, stirring continuously, until the mixture becomes stringy. Transfer the prepared mass to a colander or oiled dish.
Put a not very heavy press on the ground and put it in the refrigerator for a couple of hours. Carefully remove the finished cheese from the mold and cut into arbitrary portions. If you wish, you can use various herbs and your favorite seasonings to prepare the cheese.
Homemade mozzarella cheese
It is not difficult to cook mozzarella at home, you just need to purchase rennet - rennet.
Ingredients:
- cold water - 120 ml;
- citric acid - 1.5 tsp;
- distilled water - 50 ml;
- rennet - ¼ tsp
- whole milk - 4 l.
Do not use ultra pasteurized milk for preparing this cheese, which has a long shelf life, otherwise you will not get the cheese of the desired consistency due to improper reaction of chemical elements.
To make cheese, first pour the milk into a deep saucepan, add citric acid and stir gently. Then heat the milk to 32 ° C, then turn off the stove. Add rennet diluted with water to the milk. Stir for about half a minute, cover and let sit for about 10 minutes.
After the mass turns into soft cheese, cut it with a knife into squares with a side of 2-3 cm. Stir everything slightly and heat to 43 ° C. Take a colander and place it in a bowl. Transfer the cheese to a colander, drain the whey and pour it back into the pot, then heat the whey to 85 ° C.
Put on gloves, separate a small piece from the mass and, using a slotted spoon, place a piece of cheese in the hot whey for 10 seconds. Then remove the cheese from the whey, stretch and fold it several times, then dip it back into the pot. Then stretch the cheese and roll it into balls or pigtails.
