Real, without fakes and additives, cottage cheese is a very useful and important product. Recently, however, unflattering reviews are increasingly heard about the quality of cottage cheese on sale.
How to choose the right cottage cheese so that the product does not cause harm? You can hardly find anything better than a rustic one, but this luxury is not available to every city dweller, so you have to purchase this product in different stores.
Pay attention to the following:
1 package
The road must be dry; not sticky and not excessively wet, there should be no swelling. If it is cottage cheese in an inflated vacuum package, it is better to bypass such a product. It must be stored in a display case with a refrigerator, since it quickly deteriorates when heated.
2. Terms of storage
The release date shouldn't be any further than yesterday's. Real cottage cheese is stored for no more than three days. If the expiration date indicated on the package exceeds this period, a large amount of preservatives and various chemicals are mixed in the product, which are not always safe for health.
3. Appearance
The color of the most correct cottage cheese is white, with a light creamy shade. A yellow or bluish tint of cottage cheese is a sign of long-term storage or lack of quality.
4. Smell
The smell of real cottage cheese is lactic and sour. If it seemed to you strongly sour, it is very likely that the product is stale, or made with violations of technology.
5. Taste
The taste of real cottage cheese is tender and slightly sour, but not sour, all the more sweet. Sour curd is old, and the sweet taste comes from the addition of sugar to hide the high acid content. The tasteless cottage cheese is simply tasteless and, most likely, contains starch or calcium chloride.
As a rule, you cannot experience the taste and color of the packaged cottage cheese in the store, but if you come across a low-quality product, you need to remember the manufacturer, and henceforth refuse to purchase products under this trademark.
It is also worth knowing that soft, paper, cottage cheese packaging is not the best option, it is fragile, and it is easier for pathogenic bacteria to get into it. Preference should be given to solid, plastic or vacuum packaging. It is sealed, so the risk of pathogens entering it is lower, and it is easier to keep the product in it.
If the purpose of the purchase is precisely cottage cheese, you should look for exactly this word on the label, but not "curd product", "curd mass". All these products and masses are made with the addition of sugar or milk fat substitute, aka margarine, aka hydrogenated vegetable fat.
The label must indicate the fat content of the curd, its energy and nutritional value, as well as its composition. The presence of preservatives, thickeners and food additives reduces the quality of the product.
It is better, of course, to buy cottage cheese on the market, where each batch of products undergoes sanitary and epidemiological control, there is a choice and you can not only have a good look at the cottage cheese you buy, but also smell and even taste it.
