Recently, the dairy industry has not really made us happy - wherever you look, restored milk is everywhere. Therefore, in order to eat not only tasty, but also healthy, you have to make cottage cheese from milk at home.

It is not so difficult, you just need to get suitable milk - either store milk intended for baby food or farm milk will do. And I will tell you how to make cottage cheese from sour milk or yogurt. I'll give you two proven recipes at once, choose the one that you like best.

What to look for when choosing milk? On the manufacturer's reputation and shelf life. The smaller the last parameter, the more likely the product is natural.

Sour milk cottage cheese at home

• 2 liters of farm milk (or other credible)
• 2 tbsp sour cream of any fat content

I know two ways to cook cottage cheese at home: with and without heating. The first option takes less time, the cottage cheese is dense, suitable for making cheese cakes, casseroles and other cheesecakes.

Without heating, we get a very tender, I would say juicy product, this cottage cheese is suitable for consumption in its natural form with and without additives.

Of course, the division is conditional, and thermally processed dishes can be prepared from tender cottage cheese. For such purposes, it needs to be squeezed out of the whey a little harder. Oppression does an excellent job with this task.

You can not ferment milk with sour cream, as described below, but make cottage cheese from sour milk on your own, without human help.

How to make homemade cottage cheese from curdled milk

Pour milk into a saucepan with a thick bottom, add sour cream and stir with a whisk, but without fanaticism - you do not need to beat. The goal is to evenly distribute sour cream throughout the entire volume of liquid.

Cover the dishes with a lid and leave in a warm place for a day, maybe a little more. As a result, we get an excellent curdled milk. How to understand that it is already possible to cook cottage cheese from sour milk fermented at home? The curd should be firm and shaking like jelly, and whey will begin to flake off the sides of the pot.

We put the dishes on the stove, the fire is minimal. After 10-15 minutes, the curd begins to curdle, separating from the whey. At this point, I stir the mass a little for a more even heating (literally 4-5 movements from the edges to the center). Otherwise, the curd heats up at the walls more than in the middle, which affects the quality of the curd.

Important! We do not bring it to a boil, the fire is minimal all the time, this is the key moment to make homemade cottage cheese from milk tender. Otherwise, the boiled yogurt will turn into rubber lumps.

Keep the pan on low heat for another 10-15 minutes. Then, gently stir again - literally a few movements from the walls to the center of the dishes, no need to try to break the clots into small pieces, just mix the product to equalize the temperature inside the entire volume. Remove the pan from heat, close the lid and leave for another 10 minutes.

Immediately after that, fold the curdled mass into a colander, lined with 2-3 layers of gauze. Leave the whey to drain for 2 hours. Options: Tie the ends of the gauze and hang the curd over the sink. When the bulk of the liquid drains, to speed up the process, the curd can be put under pressure. To do this, cover the product with the ends of the gauze and put a load on top. Thus, the outflow of whey will be accelerated.

This recipe for making cottage cheese at home from milk requires a certain amount of time: about 24 hours for cooking yogurt and about 3 hours for heating and a plumb line. Total 27 hours.

Do not be alarmed, your time will take a little less than an hour, the rest of the process takes place on its own, without your participation.

How to make curd from sour milk without heating

As in the previous recipe, before making cottage cheese from milk, you need to ferment it and turn it into yogurt.

• Pour two tablespoons of sour cream with half a glass of milk and loosen thoroughly with a fork. Only then mix the resulting mixture with the total volume of milk.
• We remove the dishes with the future yogurt in a warm place. In a day, the milk will turn sour completely, turning into a dense milk clot and yellowish whey. Sometimes the acidification process can take a little longer, up to 30 hours. The duration of the process depends on the ambient temperature. The warmer the faster.
• This time we will not heat anything. Usually, in rural life, the clot is weighed out in a canvas or gauze bag. But you can do with a more everyday set: a saucepan, a colander and cheesecloth in 2-3 layers.
• Weighing without heating is exactly the technique that will help make curdled milk cottage cheese very tender and juicy.
• We take a large saucepan, put a colander on top, gauze in it. Pour sour milk into a colander covered with a cloth and remove the structure with the product in the cold (refrigerator, balcony). The whey from the curd will drain for 10-12 hours.

If you plan to use cottage cheese for cooking other dishes, then I recommend making it a little drier. To do this, cover the curd mass in a colander with the edges of the gauze and put a little oppression on top, I use a jar of water. Hold the curd under pressure for a few more hours.

As you can see, this recipe for cottage cheese from milk at home is more time consuming: in total, it may take 34-36 (sometimes 40) hours to get a product of proper quality. Again, do not be alarmed, in this case you will spend even less personal time than in the previous version - about half an hour.

The yield of cottage cheese from 2 liters of milk: 400-500 gr .. This is very, very inexpensive for a quality product.

By 06.10.2015

How often do we buy sour milk in the store. Either the expiration date has expired, or it was stored incorrectly, but you can no longer drink it, risking an upset stomach. Do not rush to pour the money spent down the drain. Nothing bad has happened with milk yet, just the fermentation process has started. For the human body, only the first and last stage of fermentation of a dairy product is digestible: when it is not yet fermented and when it has just finished.

We have acquired milk, which is already on the way from the first to the last stage. Therefore, it is no longer possible to drink it, but this milk, pasteurized somewhere at the factory, and then forgotten on the counter or in the refrigerator, can make an excellent healthy natural product.

Ingredients

• Milk
• Liter glass jar
• Deep saucepan - with sides above a liter can
• Colander
• Plate
• A bowl
• Gauze

Step by step cooking process at home

1. Pour the sour milk into a 1-liter glass jar, cover with a napkin and leave in a warm, dark place until it sours completely. You should get a full-fledged curdled milk. If the jar is not shaken, then in a day the milk flakes will rise up, as in the photo. To speed up the souring, you can put a crust of brown bread, a spoonful of sour cream or kefir in a jar.
2. Prepare a deep saucepan. Place a linen towel or napkin on the bottom. If this is not done and the jar is placed directly on the bottom of the pot, the glass may crack from the heat.



3. Place the jar on a towel, and then gently pour cold water into the saucepan up to the jar's shoulders. If you put a jar in already poured water, it is difficult to calculate the correct amount of liquid. DO NOT MIX the contents of the jar. It's okay if the edge of the water doesn't line up with the edge of the liquid in the jar. 2-3 cm will not greatly correct the heat balance.



4. Cover the jar with a plate. Select its diameter so that the pan is as closed as possible. Heat water to a boil. Reduce heat and leave on the stove for 5-10 minutes. During this time, the protein in the jar will curl up enough. The density of the future cottage cheese depends on the duration of the heat treatment.



If you bring the steam bath to a boil and turn it off immediately, the curd will be tender and soft. Leaving the jar in boiling water for 10 minutes will result in a fine-grained dry cottage cheese.

5. Remove the jar from the pot and let cool. Do not break curled lumps in the jar.



6. Place a colander on top of a bowl and line it with a double layer of clean gauze.
7. Discard the contents of the jar in a colander. The cottage cheese should not spread out in a shapeless mass, but lie in a colander in whole lumps.



8. Form a knot, gather the ends of the gauze together, fasten them and hang them somewhere so that excess liquid is drained from the curd. I tie the gauze with an elastic ring, on which I hang the bag on the tap above the kitchen sink in the evening. In the morning I take it off and serve it for breakfast.



9. The whey remaining in the bowl contains so much useful, nutritious and tasty that its fate can be very varied.



10. Someone rubs it on the skin in the face and décolleté area, thereby prolonging their youth outwardly, someone prepares delicious dishes (pancakes, okroshka, pies, etc.), and someone just drinks this yummy, a bite with pancakes, rejuvenating from the inside.
11. That's how much cottage cheese is obtained from a liter of sour milk. Approximately 150 grams.



Recipe to load

In Soviet times, when everything, including butter, was on coupons, our parents whipped it out of liquid (almost kefir) sour cream. If you drive 1 liter of sour cream for 1.5 hours in a three-liter can, you get exactly 200 g of butter and a white liquid - reverse. The butter was washed with cold water, and put into a water bath, as we did before with sour milk, and low-fat cottage cheese was obtained from it. The pancake dough was made on the translucent whey remaining from the cottage cheese. Pancakes were greased with freshly whipped butter and freshly squeezed curd was wrapped in them. The waste-free technology used by our mothers to simply feed the family can today be used to eat natural products, and not their substitutes.

Cottage cheese is a fermented milk product obtained from fermented milk with the removal of whey. This is a useful product, a source of calcium and phosphorus, which is easily absorbed by the body.

Nowadays, you can buy cottage cheese without any problems at any grocery store, but store goods cannot be compared with those obtained from homemade products. Cooking this fermented milk product at home is a guarantee of confidence in the quality and freshness of the finished product, since the entire cooking process is personally controlled by the hostess.

At home, making cottage cheese is not as difficult as it seems at first glance. There are several ways to prepare it: from fresh milk (using the Calcium-Chlorine preparation), yogurt, kefir, using various starter cultures.

Curd from curdled milk

Making curd from sour milk is the simplest and most popular way. In this way, it has been made in everyday conditions since ancient times in the villages. For this recipe, any milk is suitable, even purchased, even homemade, from under a cow. The more milk, the more finished cottage cheese will turn out.

Housewives who decide to make curd from homemade ingredients for the first time are advised to start with 1 liter of milk. The output will be small, but then, with the next attempts, you will make adjustments if the first result suddenly does not please.

So, to make cottage cheese at home you will need:

• curdled milk
• pot
• colander
• gauze

The cooking process is incredibly simple:

• Pour the sour milk into a saucepan, put it on the slowest heat
• Heat the contents of the bowl to 50 ° - exactly until the whey begins to separate from the curd
• After this, the pan must be removed from the heat immediately. Some housewives bring the contents to a boil - this is highly discouraged, since such a "material" is fraught with a very hard curd mass, more reminiscent of rubber
• The next step: fold the gauze in 2-4 layers, place it in a colander so that the edges hang from the walls, and the bottom of the colander remains closed

• Place a colander over a saucepan and gently pour the milk mass into it
• Wait for all the serum to drain
• You don't need to throw away the whey - it will work great for okroshka, you can also knead a good dough for pies on it
• The final step: transfer the cooking result from cheesecloth to a plate

A tasty and healthy product made from homemade dairy ingredients is ready!

Important nuances

It would be useful to recall the conditions that will help you get the most delicious homemade cottage cheese:

• Cottage cheese made from natural village milk will be much tastier and fatter
• It is better to let milk sour not in the refrigerator, since at low temperatures it is more likely to deteriorate and acquire an unpleasant smell than turn into yogurt

• If it is necessary to speed up the process of converting milk into curdled milk, then for these purposes it is better to add a small amount of fermented milk sourdough, a little sour cream or a piece of curd. It is highly discouraged to use kefir or yogurt for these purposes - these products are suitable for making kefir and just yogurt, which has nothing to do with yogurt
• It is better to cook curd from fresh yogurt - it will turn out to be tender, will have a pleasant taste and can be stored in the refrigerator for up to 5 days

Kefir curd

You can please your family with a truly delicious curd by preparing it on a kefir basis. There are plenty of recipes for this. One method is similar to the above-mentioned fermented milk-based recipe.

To make the process more understandable, we have prepared a step-by-step recipe with a photo. You can safely add any of the proposed options to your culinary piggy bank, and spoil your homemade natural cottage cheese both in pure form and with various additives. It is prepared from milk, kefir, yogurt and other dairy products.

Heat treatment will take place at not too high temperatures. As a rule, the technology uses a water bath. For this, a saucepan with raw materials is placed in a bowl of water. At a high processing temperature and an increase in the duration of the process, the curd deteriorates its quality. It becomes tough and dry.

For cooking you need utensils:

• Glass jar;
• 2 pots of different diameters;
• Colander or strainer.

And also prepare a piece of natural fabric or gauze folded in several layers.

Before straining, wet a cloth (gauze) with boiled water and wring it out, and then nothing will stick to it.

To prepare homemade cottage cheese, they take milk from a cow or store milk. In the first case, the yield is greater, the product is fatter, and from store-bought pasteurized milk - softer and more tender.

When buying raw materials in the store, choose milk with a short shelf life and a fat content of at least 3.6%.

Whey is a by-product of making homemade cottage cheese. It has nutritional value by itself, and it also behaves well as a base for dough. So do not pour it out, but use it to make pies and okroshka.

How to make cottage cheese at home from homemade and store milk: a step-by-step recipe

Cottage cheese is a fermented milk product, it is obtained from sour milk, therefore the first stage of preparation is fermentation. For this reason, long-term storage milk will not work, it simply will not turn sour. We take it in polyethylene (by the way, it is cheaper). Be sure to look at the date of manufacture - only fresh milk is suitable for us.

On a note

You can skim the cream off farm milk, but if you want to cook fatty cottage cheese, you don't need to.

Step by step cooking:

We talked about how to properly cook delicious coarse-grained cottage cheese at home from whole sour milk, gave a step-by-step recipe, but you can do without a water bath. A saucepan with curdled milk is simply put on low heat and heated. Be sure to watch so that it does not burn. After curdling, proceed as described above.

Kefir: fresh and frozen

You can quickly make cottage cheese from kefir. The yield will be less than from yogurt, but the taste is no worse. We skip the fermentation stage and immediately put the dishes with kefir in a water bath. Remember to stir. The leftover whey can also be used, for example, to make pancakes or crumpets on it.

The heating temperature of kefir should not exceed 60 ° C, otherwise the cottage cheese will turn out to be tough.

A glass jar is great for making homemade yogurt cottage cheese in a water bath, just do not forget to put a towel on the bottom of the pan so that it does not burst when heated. The process will be similar to the sterilization of conservation, with the difference that you do not need to bring it to a boil. The can is convenient in that it is not necessary to interfere with the mass, and readiness can be easily tracked by the separation of the whey from the curd mass. This is very clearly visible through the glass.

A completely different technology is used for frozen kefir curd. In this case, no heat treatment is carried out.

Cooking steps:

1. Put a pack of kefir in the freezer.
2. After it freezes, take it out of the freezer, remove the packaging.
3. Place the frozen kefir in a colander lined with a damp cloth or cheesecloth folded in 2-3 layers. Place a colander over a bowl or saucepan.
4. Leave to defrost at room temperature for at least 5 hours. The time depends on the air temperature.
5. When all the ice is thawed, strain out the mass remaining on the gauze, transfer it to a glass or plastic container.

Cottage cheese from pre-frozen kefir turns out to be dietary, tender and soft, without grains. The consistency resembles a cream. The taste depends on the quality of the original product.

If the room is cool, the defrosting process can take up to 10 hours. It is convenient to put the bag in the freezer in the evening and put the kefir ice on cheesecloth in the morning. Then fresh homemade cottage cheese will be ready for dinner.

In a slow cooker: with sour cream and sourdough

In a slow cooker, cottage cheese is prepared from kefir, fermented baked milk or sour cow or goat milk. If there is fresh milk and sour cream, then with the help of a wonderful saucepan you can also make a delicious product, only it will take more time, the process will take about 12 hours, and possibly even longer.

We will need such products;

• Milk - 10 glasses;
• Sour cream - ½ cup.

Preparation:

1. Pour milk into the multicooker bowl.
2. Add sour cream, stir. To make this easier, dilute the sour cream in a little milk, and then pour the liquid mixture into a bowl.
3. Set the "Heating" mode, leave for half an hour.
4. After 2 hours, turn on the heating again, but for 15 minutes.
5. It is more convenient to put the cottage cheese at night, then the yogurt will be ready in the morning.
6. For curdling at the final stage, turn on the multicooker in the "Heating" mode for 1 hour.
7. Now it remains to throw the thick mass onto cheesecloth. Pre-fold it several times and put it in a colander, and place it over the pan.
8. Wait for all the serum to drain.
9. Do not try to speed up the process by stirring the mixture with a spoon. Leave it alone, as a last resort - tighten the edges of the gauze alternately from all sides.
10. As usual, transfer the prepared curd to a suitable dish and refrigerate.

Instead of sour cream, you can use any fermented milk product: kefir, fermented baked milk, yogurt.

You can prepare a tasty and healthy fermented milk product with special ferments in 8 hours. An excellent result is obtained with the BakZdrav sourdough. The instruction is attached to it very detailed. In a multicooker, this is done like this:

1. Pour the leaven into the cooled boiled milk, stir.
2. Pour the mixture into the multicooker bowl, turn on the "Yogurt" mode. If not, then set the temperature to 35-40 ° C, leave for 8 hours.
3. Using a spatula, cut a dense layer right in the bowl into rectangles with a side of 2 cm (do not stir, just pick it up), set the temperature to 60 ° C, cook for 15 minutes.
4. Strain through cheesecloth, cool.

Refrigerate for at least 2 hours, then serve. Children like this curd very much. It is stored in the refrigerator for no more than 3 days. If you add berries, fruits or raisins to it and pour over the syrup, you get a wonderful dessert.

Homemade cottage cheese with calcium chloride

If you need to increase the calcium content, then a pharmacy drug calcium chloride 10% is used for this. It is sold in ampoules and bottles. Observe precautions when using the ampoule.

To prevent glass from accidentally getting into the product, draw up the drug with a syringe with a needle.

• Milk - 300 ml;
• Calcium chloride - 1 tsp

How to cook:

1. Boil milk
2. Add calcium chloride, after which the milk begins to curdle.
3. Throw on cheesecloth, drain.

This technology achieves two goals. Firstly, the preparation is very fast, no preparatory measures are required. Secondly, cottage cheese is enriched with calcium, which is necessary for the normal functioning of the body.

Calcified cottage cheese is often prescribed for children; it is useful for the elderly as a prevention of osteoporosis.

We have given several options for how to cook cottage cheese at home. This can be done quickly with calcium chloride or without heat treatment by freezing and then thawing kefir. A very tasty and tender curd is obtained in a slow cooker. And there is also the classic way that our grandmothers used. In each case, the consistency will be different, and the taste will also be different, so you need to try and choose what your family will like.

It has long been known that cottage cheese is a useful and necessary product for the body. It contains a lot of calcium and valuable protein.

After five months, pediatricians are allowed to introduce complementary foods with cottage cheese to children. But in the store, you can rarely find quality cottage cheese at an affordable price.

We offer you to prepare this dairy product yourself from sour milk. The taste of such cottage cheese cannot be compared with the industrial analogue, and the benefits are much greater. Recipes using a microwave, multicooker and tips, read below.

The benefits and possible harm of homemade cottage cheese

We have already talked a little about the benefits of cottage cheese. These are not all the advantages of this white fermented milk miracle.

The protein in this product is equally beneficial for people of all ages. Contains B vitamins, retinol, vitamin E.

A dairy product can be harmful due to non-observance of a sense of proportion in food and allergic reactions. Of course, in order for a home product to bring only benefits, you need to monitor storage and expiration dates.

The cottage cheese in the recipe, which uses warming sour milk, is stored in the refrigerator for no more than 48 hours. Subject to the availability of containers with a tightly closed lid.

Do not risk eating cottage cheese after the expiration date, even if it does not have a pungent smell and its taste has not changed. Poisoning with fermented milk products has serious health consequences.

The classic recipe for curd from sour milk

Cooking curd is not as laborious and time-consuming as it might seem. We will tell you how grandmothers did and continue to do this in the villages.

For cooking, you need real cow's milk, which has turned into yogurt.

From three liters of milk, the result is 750-950 grams of product. Add honey, jam or fresh berries to it and enjoy the taste of the homemade curd.

There is another way of cooking yogurt without heating. It is necessary to prepare in advance a dense fabric and make a bag out of it. Pour sour milk into it and leave to drain the whey.

As soon as the liquid stops dripping, you can eat the product. Such cottage cheese turns out to be tender, soft, but watery. Not suitable for fillings in pancakes, pies and cheesecakes.

An old recipe in a Russian oven

Cottage cheese is also one of the most ancient foods. This is how it was prepared in the old days in Russia. If there is a stove, then you can repeat the preparation of cottage cheese according to the recipe of our ancestors.

• Pour the yogurt into a clay pot;
• Put in a warm oven (but not very hot) for several hours;
• When peeling occurs, drain the whey, and put the curd in gauze under any heavy object.

After 2-3 hours, you can taste the fermented milk product.

How was cottage cheese stored in the old days without a refrigerator? To do this, after the press, the cottage cheese was sent back to the oven, and then under the weight and so on several times. The finished cake was poured with ghee and stored for months.

How to make cottage cheese from sour milk in the microwave

This is the fastest and easiest cooking method. You can take any sour milk, add kefir, sour cream or yogurt there.

With experience, you will know how much of this or that ingredient to add in order to get the curd to your taste. According to reviews, a delicious product is obtained from a mixture in a one-to-one ratio of kefir and milk.

Pour the mixture into a suitable cup and microwave. Turn on at full power, set the time on the timer for about 9-11 minutes.

Fix the gauze or cotton cloth in a colander, and strain the mixture through it. Leave the cottage cheese like this for 5-10 hours.

Homemade cottage cheese in a slow cooker

A multicooker is a convenient thing for making cottage cheese - you don't need to dirty a lot of dishes and you can free up time for other things.

For cooking, take sour milk and pour it into a bowl. We select the "heating" mode.

As a rule, this option heats the contents of the bowl at a temperature of 40 degrees. This is exactly what you need to make tasty and proper cottage cheese. We choose the time from 40 minutes to 1 hour.

Then we act as in the first recipe. You can take a colander with cheesecloth and put a saucepan underneath. Dump the contents of the multicooker onto layers of gauze and leave for 5-8 minutes for the whey to drain.

The product will be ready in 4-12 hours. This is enough time to make pancakes with whey and then fill them with homemade cottage cheese.

Children's curd at home

There are two recipes for making baby cottage cheese:

1. Sour curd cooked on kefir,
2. Fermented milk product using calcium.

For the first recipe, kefir from a dairy kitchen or a high-quality children's one is suitable. Kefir is heated in a bowl.

After clots begin to form, the stove is turned off. The resulting mixture is filtered through cheesecloth. It is necessary to store the curd in a glass container with a closed lid for no more than a day.

For the second recipe, you need to boil the milk and add a solution of calcium chloride to it. It can be purchased at the pharmacy. Then bring the solution to a boil. Remove from heat and cool. Squeeze the curd in gauze without much effort. Store in the same way as in the first recipe.

From milk in an amount of 300 ml, 50 g of cottage cheese is obtained. This amount requires 3 ml of 20% calcium chloride solution.

To achieve an airy and uniform consistency, beat the curd with a mixer. You can add bananas, peaches, berries or jam there.

1. If you want to get grainy and dry curd, then increase the time for draining the sourdough. For those who like soft curd, it will be enough to keep the workpiece in gauze for 4-5 hours;
2. Any sour milk is suitable for cooking, but it is better to choose homemade;
3. Do not use milk that has sour after the expiration date in the refrigerator;
4. Do not pour out the whey, it is also a valuable and healthy product. Can be consumed as a drink or added to pancake batter. There are recipes for serum-based skin care;
5. If there is no sour milk, and cottage cheese is needed in the near future, then a competent recipe will help. Pour milk into a saucepan and put on fire. As soon as a little foam appears on the surface, you need to add lemon juice and stir everything. Sour milk must be immediately removed from the heat. Next, you can cook cottage cheese by simply throwing the yogurt into cheesecloth. But you still have to wait at least 4 hours;
6. For the first experience of making cottage cheese, you need to take a little milk. So that later, if something goes wrong or you don't like the final product, you can correct your mistakes on the next portion of milk;
7. It is important not to digest the curdled milk, otherwise the curd will turn out to be tough like chewing gum.

Homemade cottage cheese makes delicious casseroles, dumplings and cheesecakes. Do not be lazy in the evening to work a little on yogurt in order to get a healthy and tasty breakfast in the morning.