There are many recipes for making cottage cheese at home, and today I will share one of them with you. Delicate, juicy, moderately crumbly, with a pleasant sourness, tasty and healthy curd, we will make from sour milk, which, if desired, can be replaced with kefir. It can be eaten just like that, seasoned with sour cream, natural honey or jam. Or, if you want, make cheese cakes, desserts, cookies or other pastries from homemade cottage cheese.

By the way, the site already has 2 options on how to make cottage cheese in a cold way (that is, without heating) - see and. In this case, we will subject the fermented milk product to a slight heating, that is, we will cook homemade cottage cheese in a hot way. As a result, from 1 liter of sour milk (2.5% fat) I get about 230 grams of cottage cheese. If you take the raw materials of lower fat content, the cottage cheese will be less and vice versa.

Ingredients:

Cooking a dish step by step with a photo:

To prepare homemade cottage cheese in a hot way, we only need sour milk, which, if desired, you can safely replace with kefir. As I wrote above, the fatter the original product, the more in weight and fat content, and also the more tender the finished curd will be.

Pour the fermented milk product into a saucepan of a suitable size and put it on the stove. Heat sour milk (kefir) over medium heat, stirring occasionally, until it heats up. It is important that the liquid warms up evenly throughout the volume, otherwise everything from below will curl up faster.

When the milk (kefir) becomes almost hot and light steam appears on top, it is important not to miss the moment. Do not let the contents of the dishes boil - then the homemade cottage cheese will turn out to be too dry and tough. We want the milk to curl up into small curds and whey.

This is what the future cottage cheese looks like when it is practically curled up. As you can see from the photo, a yellowish serum has begun to separate. Turn off the heat, close the pan with a lid and let it stand for about 5 minutes. During this time, the contents will exfoliate and you can work with it further.

We take a deep container, insert a sieve into it, put cheesecloth on top in 3-4 layers. Pour the contents of the pan into cheesecloth. Whey will drain into the bowl (3 minutes will be enough), and homemade curd will remain in the gauze.

Cottage cheese is a valuable source of calcium and protein, the undisputed leader among dietary meals recommended for the prevention of a whole bunch of diseases. Today, many housewives refuse industrially manufactured fermented milk products and anxiously collect secrets that suggest how to make cottage cheese from sour milk on their own.

Benefits of a homemade product:

1. Natural composition, without preservatives and vegetable fats, which retains all the necessary vitamins, minerals, enzymes.
2. The ability to adjust the juiciness, density and fat content of the dish - homemade cottage cheese usually turns out to be tender, layered, with the right amount of acid.

You can prepare it in different ways.

The main rule is the same - high-quality, proven milk. It would be nice from a domestic cow (it is recommended to boil it beforehand!), But store-bought, only necessarily pasteurized, with a short storage period is acceptable.

For any of the methods we need:

• sour milk;
• metal sieve or colander;
• a large piece of gauze.

Cooking time: ~ 6 - 12 hours.

Sequencing:

1. A jar of sour milk that is not full by 1 cm (you can take another container, but the milk should be immediately fermented in it) is sent to the cold oven. We do not cover!
2. We heat for 40 - 60 minutes at a temperature set within the range of 120 - 150 ° C.
3. We turn off the equipment, leave the resulting cottage cheese in it until it cools completely, you can overnight.
4. Cover the sieve / colander with two layers of gauze.
5. Gradually pour the cottage cheese onto it, carefully draining the whey.
6. We squeeze the ends of the fabric with a knot - this will squeeze out most of the unnecessary liquid.
7. We forget about cottage cheese for a couple of hours, until the whey drains. If you want to get a dry product, we tie the gauze and hang it over the bowl. We wish you wet cottage cheese - we leave it in a colander.
8. We periodically check the consistency of the curd mass. Upon reaching the desired density, we transfer the finished product to a storage container.

When cooking in the oven from 3 liters of milk, you can get 700 - 900 grams of delicious cottage cheese.

Note! The amount of the final product and the degree of acid depend on the duration and correctness of the souring of the feedstock. It should ripen, but at the same time not have time to peroxide. These parameters are met by a 3-day freshness product.

Cooking in the microwave

The easiest and quickest way to get fragrant cottage cheese from yogurt is to use the microwave.

Cooking time: ~ 5 - 15 minutes directly in the microwave oven + several hours to cool down.

Sequencing:

1. Pour the sour milk into a container suitable for microwave use. It is not necessary to cover it, although this option is also acceptable.
2. We turn on the microwave oven at full power (usually 700 - 750 W) for 5 minutes.
3. After the beep, we check the serum. If it is transparent, the preparation is over, if its color is milky, you need to add a few more minutes. The amount of time is a conditional parameter, which can only be determined experimentally for your oven. It depends on the characteristics of the microwave, as well as on the shape and material of the container used in it.
4. We leave the cottage cheese in the resulting liquid for several hours until it cools completely.
5. The mixture cooled to room temperature is discarded on a sieve to remove excess whey from the finished product.

From a liter of curdled milk using a microwave oven, you can get from 200 g of cottage cheese, which depends on the quality of milk and the percentage of protein in it.

With the addition of kefir

When there is no time to wait for the milk to turn sour, you can use kefir and cook the most delicate cottage cheese in a couple of hours.

For a liter of milk, we need 0.5 - 1.0 liters of kefir 1% fat. The more kefir you take for fermentation, the more pronounced the sourness will be in the finished product.

Sequencing:

1. Bring milk to a boil.
2. Remove from the stove, pour kefir into it, stir well.
3. We leave it for at least 120 minutes (you can also overnight). During this time, the curd will have time to "rebound" from the whey.
4. We filter the finished product through cheesecloth. The less time the excess liquid will drain, the more moist the curd will turn out in the end.

Multicooker recipe

Cottage cheese in a slow cooker - the most popular "assistant" of a modern housewife - is prepared no less simply and quickly than in other ways.

The program can be used at your own discretion. For example, "yogurt", "heating", "baked goods", "milk porridge". Cooking time, respectively, will vary from 15 minutes to an hour. The main condition when choosing a mode is a temperature that will not bring the liquid to a boil.

Sequencing:

1. Pour the sour milk into the multicooker bowl.
2. We choose the program we like, if necessary, set the temperature to 80 degrees, turn on the device and forget about cooking for a period of time set by the technique.
3. After the required time has passed, turn off the multicooker and let the cottage cheese cool down. It will take at least 3 - 4 hours.
4. We discard the resulting product on cheesecloth, allowing the serum to drain. If necessary, we hang the gauze in a bundle or gently wring it out with our hands by analogy with the methods already described.

Fastest recipe

If there is an urgent need to cook homemade cottage cheese, you can use a proven recipe that allows you to get 0.5 kg of the most delicate ricotta in just an hour.

We need:

• 3 liters of fresh homemade or store-bought pasteurized milk;
• a generous pinch of salt;
• 3 - 4 tbsp. l. lemon juice or 2 tsp. citric acid.

Sequencing:

1. Rinse the pan with cold water, pour milk into it, salt, add lemon juice / crystalline acid.
2. We heat the resulting mixture over low heat or a water bath, stirring occasionally.
3. We continue the previous stage until the appearance of "flakes" and complete separation of the whey.
4. We discard the curd on cheesecloth and leave for 45 - 60 minutes for the liquid to drain.

You can use a slightly different technology - bring milk to a boil, remove from the stove, only then salt it and pour in lemon juice. Next, the mixture needs to be mixed with the composition and wait 7 minutes until the liquid begins to curl up in flakes.

At this point, it would be nice to add a tablespoon of heavy cream, which will make the taste of the finished cottage cheese especially tender and creamy.

After the right time has passed to separate the ricotta from the whey, as with all other methods, it is recommended to use a colander and gauze.

Cold cooking technology

The following are two methods of making cottage cheese from sour milk, excluding its heat treatment:

1. The yogurt formed as a result of milk fermentation is simply thrown onto a sieve with gauze. Squeeze out excess liquid, getting a moist and more delicate in consistency fermented milk product than cottage cheese cooked in the oven, in a water bath, etc.
2. A bag of kefir is left overnight in the freezer, in the morning the resulting "piece of ice" is removed from cellophane and sent to a colander covered with gauze until it is completely defrosted and the cottage cheese is separated from the whey.

Delicious curd made from sour goat milk

The technologies for making cottage cheese from cow and goat milk are identical. The only difference is that the latter is more valuable. It enhances immunity, has healing properties. That is why the cottage cheese from it turns out to be easily digestible, low-allergenic, maximally saturated with vitamins and microelements. But it sometimes takes a lot of time for goat's milk to turn sour. That is why experienced housewives speed up this process by boiling and adding salt.

Such manipulations allow you to get goat curdled milk literally in a day, subject to fermentation in a warm place. Next, you can choose how to make cottage cheese from sour goat milk: in a slow cooker, microwave, or using ordinary heating.

Having secured the proposed proven recipes, you can easily master the simple technology of making homemade cottage cheese and delight your family with delicious and healthy culinary masterpieces.

Store-bought dairy products often contain dyes, antibiotics, and other harmful substances. However, you can make some dairy treats yourself, such as cottage cheese. So, you can be sure of the quality and benefits of the product.

The benefits and harms of the product

Curd is a source of easily assimilable calcium, which strengthens the human skeletal system. Calcium is a building block of bones and teeth. When using a fermented milk product, the risk of caries is reduced, and visits to the dentist become less frequent.

The cottage cheese also includes other useful elements: magnesium, phosphorus, potassium, sodium, vitamins A, B, C and D. Together, they support good immune function and strengthen the cardiovascular system. These substances are indispensable for men's and women's health.

During pregnancy, the female body needs more micro and macro elements. The vitamins and minerals contained in the fermented milk product are involved in the formation of the baby's skeletal system and prevent the development of osteoporosis in the expectant mother. Cottage cheese improves the condition of hair and nails, which are essential attributes of female beauty.

For men, this product is valuable primarily for its high protein content. Which normalizes the production of male sex hormones responsible for potency. But protein is also involved in the process of building muscle mass, which is why this product is highly valued by athletes, especially bodybuilders.

Good cottage cheese for the gastrointestinal tract. The live bacteria contained in its composition improve the process of food digestion, normalize the intestinal microflora and its peristalsis. Regular use of cottage cheese cleanses the body of toxins.

Although sour milk cottage cheese is useful, there are still some contraindications to its use.

• Individual intolerance to the curd product. Cottage cheese is contraindicated for people suffering from an allergic reaction to lactose.
• The high-fat product should be used with caution by people with liver and pancreatic diseases. For such ailments, it is better to choose low-fat cottage cheese.
• Homemade cottage cheese is a perishable product; its shelf life should not exceed 3 days. After this time, the product cannot be eaten.

When using a curd product - the main thing is not to overeat, the body itself will tell you when enough is enough. Nutritionists advise limiting its intake to 250 g per day.

Basic cooking rules

Before preparing homemade cottage cheese, it is worthwhile to correctly approach the choice of the source product. Cottage cheese can be cooked from both village and store milk. Rustic is more recommended, it is fatter and more cottage cheese is obtained from it. Store-bought milk can also be used, but its fat content must be at least 3.5%.

The shelf life of store-bought milk should not exceed seven days. A product with a long shelf life contains antibiotics that prevent souring. Such milk may not ferment as it should for making cottage cheese. You should also not take sour milk in the store, the cottage cheese can turn out to be with a bitter taste.

Goat's milk cottage cheese turns out to be more tasty and rich. It contains more nutrients, and such a product is healthier. But it is more difficult to cook from goat milk, this milk is more sensitive to cooking errors. Therefore, for beginners in this business, it is better to use cow's milk.

Curd is made from sour milk or yogurt. Therefore, fresh milk must be prepared in advance. It is not recommended to make curdled milk in metal dishes, the metal has a bad effect on the fermentation processes. It is better to put the liquid in a glass or clay container. A regular three-liter jar is well suited for this.

Pour milk into a jar, cover with gauze or any breathable cloth and leave to ferment. The process is influenced by the air temperature, so, in a warm place, milk can ferment in 1 day, and in a cool place, this can increase up to 4 days. Therefore, for faster fermentation, it is necessary to put a jar of milk near a warm battery.

To understand if the milk has fermented enough, carefully examine the contents of the jar.

Separation of the product into a thick milk curd and yellowish whey should occur.

Recipes

Cooking curd takes 3 to 12 hours. At the same time, your participation in cooking is minimal, all processes of converting cottage cheese from milk occur independently. To cook a healthy product at home you will need:

• pot;
• gauze;
• spoiled milk;
• colander;
• a large spoon or slotted spoon.

It will take about 4 liters of milk to make 1 kg of cottage cheese. The fattier the milk, the more cottage cheese will be at the exit. The classic recipe consists of two stages: heat treatment of the product and separation of the mass from the whey.

At the first stage, we put a saucepan with sour milk on the fire. We set the heating of the plate to a minimum, since boiling of the product is unacceptable during the entire heat treatment. This is a key point in the preparation of cottage cheese, the pan should not be heated more than 50 ° C. If the curdled milk boils, then its tender clots will become hard, like rubber, and such a product can be thrown away.

If the stove is set at the minimum mode, it still heats up a lot. You can use the water bath method. To do this, put a saucepan with curdled milk in a bowl of water, and put the entire structure on medium heat. This will make it easier to keep the sour milk from boiling.

During the entire process, the contents of the pan must be stirred several times with a slotted spoon. This must be done carefully, without breaking the formed lumps. After 25 minutes, when the curds begin to settle and the whey becomes greenish, the curd is ready. Turn off the stove, remove the pan to the side and let the resulting mass cool.

We pass to the second stage of making cottage cheese. Cover the colander with gauze in 2 layers, and put the cooled curdled milk into it. The colander should be placed in a deep saucepan or secured over the sink. The serum will begin to drain, leaving lumps of fresh cottage cheese in the gauze.

After 2-3 hours, the bulk of the whey will drain and the product will be ready. To obtain a drier product, the future cottage cheese must be put under a press. To do this, cover the product with the edges of the gauze and put a load on it. This will remove excess moisture from the curd.

In rural life, a recipe for making cottage cheese without heating is more often used. To do this, put the colander in a deep saucepan, cover the bottom with gauze, pour sour milk into this structure. Next, the pot with the contents must be put in the refrigerator for 14 hours to separate the whey. The curd obtained without preheating turns out to be more tender and lighter.

You can use kefir in the preparation of cottage cheese. To do this, pour 1 liter of milk into a saucepan, put on fire and bring to a boil. As it boils, remove from heat and pour in 1 liter of kefir. Cool and discard in a colander to drain the whey. This method is good because the milk does not need to be fermented first. The curd obtained in this way turns out to be more sour.

You can make calcined cottage cheese at home. To do this, 2 teaspoons of calcium chloride must be diluted in 1 liter of milk. It is better to do this before souring milk. Calcium chloride can be purchased at any pharmacy: a product enriched with it will be even more useful.

There is a recipe for making baby cottage cheese, which is good as a complementary food for babies. It is prepared from kefir according to the classic recipe with heating, but instead of sour milk, you need to take any children's kefir.

Hello, dear visitors, I am glad that you have visited the blog page "about sweets"!

Recently, after watching TV, I began to doubt the benefits of one of my favorite and respected products - cottage cheese. Fears began to cause store goods. After checking the composition using folk methods, I found that seven out of ten items were not of high quality. Manufacturers, in pursuit of profit, sacrifice the benefits of products and our health. I will not dwell on specific brands, here we are not really talking about them.

There is such a proverb: "if you want to do something well, then do it yourself." Indeed, no one wants to deceive themselves. Therefore, I set out to cook the cottage cheese myself. This process seemed to me to be something very complicated, lengthy and financially costly. But in reality, everything turned out to be exactly the opposite.

Therefore, I strongly advise you not to be afraid and try. Just rely on my experience, follow the instructions, and you will prepare a wonderful, healthy, budgetary and delicious homemade product, the composition of which is known for sure.

So let's get down to the recipe ...

Nutritional value of the dish per 100 gr.

BZHU: 13/17/10.

Kcal: 240.

GI: Medium.

AI: high.

Cooking time: 15 minutes.

Servings: 700 g

Ingredients of the dish.

• Sour milk or yogurt - 4 liters.

Recipe.

If you accidentally have a large amount of milk sour, like mine, this product can be reanimated and made into delicious and healthy homemade cottage cheese.

We place our main and only ingredient in a thick-walled saucepan and heat over low to medium heat, avoiding burning. To evenly separate the whey, stir the liquid for 5-10 minutes until it warms up. Under no circumstances should you bring the milk to a boil, otherwise the curd will turn out to be "rubbery".

Now we will prepare the equipment for expressing the serum: put a colander on a deep container, put a gauze folded several times on top of it (I have four layers of cloth).

When curdled flakes begin to appear on the surface, turn off the stove.

The product remaining inside the bag is our homemade, tender and very tasty cottage cheese.

It has a slightly sour taste, so it can be used on its own, seasoned with sour cream and herbs, or spread on a slice of bread, or as the main ingredient in curd dough for lazy dumplings or curd biscuits.

1. Curd can be made in two ways: with and without heating. This is a matter of taste and convenience. However, the cottage cheese is slightly softer without heating.

2. If you are going to make cottage cheese from milk, take a rustic one. Especially if, according to the recipe, it should turn sour. But you can use store milk of any fat content. The fatter it is, the correspondingly fatter the cottage cheese will turn out.

3. You can also take kefir of any fat content. can only be used if you heat it.

4. The quantity and taste of the curd depend on the quality of the original product. So when buying milk or kefir, you should not skimp.

5. You can cook cottage cheese both in a saucepan and in a water bath. This is again a matter of convenience. You will find a description of the cooking process in a water bath in the recipe for kefir curd.

6. Heat dairy products in a heavy-bottomed aluminum or stainless steel pan. Enameled dishes will not work: everything in them can burn.

7. Curd is spread in a colander, covered with several layers of gauze. Place a saucepan or some other container under the colander so that the whey will drain there.

8. If you leave the curd in a colander for a couple of hours or less, it will be moist.

9. To make the curd dry and crumbly, you need to tie the ends of the gauze and hang the knot over a sink or saucepan for several hours or even overnight. The time depends on your preference: the longer the whey drains, the drier the curd will be.

10. And to keep the cottage cheese in shape, you can put it under oppression.

11. Homemade cottage cheese is stored in the refrigerator for no more than four days.

This is the traditional way of making curd.

Ingredients

• 2 liters of milk.

Preparation

Leave the milk in a warm place for 1-3 days. Don't stir it. The time depends on the temperature in the room: the warmer, the faster the milk will turn sour. To speed up the process, you can add 2 tablespoons of sour cream or a piece of black to the milk.

Milk should not turn sour in the refrigerator. There it will acquire an unpleasant odor and may start to taste bitter. If you notice that the milk in the refrigerator starts to turn sour, it is better to remove it so that it sour under suitable conditions.

Sour milk will look like a soft, thick jelly, and whey will start to appear around it. Place the milk in a saucepan and place over low heat.

Cook, stirring occasionally. Do not overheat the milk, it should be a little warm. After 10-15 minutes from the start of cooking, curd curds will begin to form in the saucepan. Remove the pan from heat and let stand for the same amount of time. Then transfer the curd to a colander and let drain.

2. Homemade cottage cheese from milk without heating

The finished cottage cheese will be more tender than in the first case.

Ingredients

• 2 liters of milk.

From the specified amount, about 400 g of cottage cheese will be obtained.

Preparation

Let the milk sour, as in the first method. Do not heat the thickened mass, but immediately fold it onto cheesecloth.

Thanks to the lemon juice, the milk will turn sour much faster.

Ingredients

• 2 liters of milk;
• 1 lemon.

From the specified amount, about 350 g of cottage cheese will be obtained.

Preparation

Pour milk into a saucepan. If you are using country milk, then bring it to a boil and reduce the heat. If the milk is already pasteurized, then just warm it up, but do not boil it.

Ingredients

• 1 liter of kefir.

Preparation

You will need two pots of different diameters. One of them should fit freely into the other. Fill a large saucepan halfway with water. Bring water to a boil over high heat.

Pour kefir into another saucepan. After boiling, place a small saucepan in a large one and heat the kefir over low heat.

Kefir should break down into cottage cheese and whey. When this happens, remove the pan from the heat and let sit for 10 minutes. Transfer the curd to a colander and let the whey drain.

And from frozen kefir you will get the most delicate airy curd, reminiscent of cream cheese. It can be mixed with herbs, salted and used for cooking.

Ingredients

• 1 liter of kefir.

From the specified amount, about 200 g of cottage cheese will be obtained.

Preparation

It is best to take kefir in a package: the bottle may crack when frozen, and the petrified kefir will be difficult to remove from it. If you only have bottled kefir at hand, just pour it into a plastic bag and tie it very tightly.

Place the bag in the freezer overnight. Kefir should look like a piece of ice. If after 10-12 hours the kefir still does not become as hard as a stone, it means that it is of poor quality. From such a product, liquid cottage cheese will turn out, more like sour cream.

Cut open the bag carefully, put the contents in a colander and wrap in cheesecloth.

Leave the kefir at room temperature until completely thawed.