Cottage cheese is a useful and popular food product. It is used both in its original form, and as an ingredient for all kinds of salads, baking. There are categories of people for whom cottage cheese is an absolute necessity as a source of protein and trace elements.
This dairy product is abundantly offered on the shelves of any supermarket. You can make it at home, but then you need sourdough for cottage cheese. What to cook it from and how to use it later, we will describe later in the article.
No intervention
By the way, the majority of rural residents in the past and the year before last made cottage cheese from milk without introducing any yeast there. The whole process took place in a natural, natural way: by souring the initial product (milk) in heat (for example, jugs were exposed in the sun in the summer, and in the winter near the stove). However, this method was quite lengthy in time and sometimes required several days to prepare. Therefore, in modern conditions, special leaven for cottage cheese is actively used.
Pharmacy option
One of the easiest options to get a good sourdough is to buy it at a pharmacy. Pepsin, renin, lactobacterin, bifidobacterin (preferably in ampoules, but also in powders) are sold there. Using these substances to get cottage cheese is quite simple. Pharmaceutical yeast for cottage cheese is introduced into the milk (the doses are usually indicated in the instructions), as a result of which the warmed milk is quickly curdled. After that, thickener should be folded onto gauze and wait for the whey to drain. Curd is ready. By the way, you can use calf rennet (or its vegetable analogue) to prepare the product. It is in this way that cottage cheese is made on an industrial scale at dairies.
To prepare the product, it is necessary to heat the sour milk in a water bath until it is completely curdled. At the same time, you can’t mix the raw materials, but try to make them flakes.
Lemon
“Quick” cottage cheese can also be obtained using ordinary lemon juice (half the fruit is enough). So:
- Heat the milk in a water bath to about 70 degrees.
- Then we introduce the leaven for cottage cheese - lemon juice, and stir.
- Leave the pan to cool.
- Very carefully pour the resulting mass into cheesecloth.
The main thing here is not to overdo it with lemon juice so that the final product does not have a characteristic aftertaste. And it’s best to steam milk and not boil it (but if you cook for the baby, it’s better not to risk it and boil it). If you do not bring the mass to a steep boil, then it turns out more tender and with a richer taste.
The yield of cottage cheese is up to 400 grams per liter (but a lot depends on the fat content of the initial product and on the season: there is less yield in the heat).
Kefir and sour cream
As a starter for homemade cottage cheese, you can use kefir. Take it at least in the store, the main thing is that it be as fresh as possible. Enough half a glass, and a good, effective sourdough for the curd is ready!
Calcium lactic acid also contributes to the souring of milk. It is enough to add a few grams per liter of raw materials.
But it is better not to take sour cream. In many cases, it also contains a stabilizer that can turn the mass into a real jelly. Well, if you decide to make sour cream curd, then add a large spoon of bazaar sour cream to a liter of fat milk: there are no excess substances.
Vinegar as a starter for the preparation of cottage cheese
Here is a recipe for making cottage cheese using vinegar:
- For five liters of daily milk (in the original recipe - goat), you need to take 50 grams of 9% vinegar.
- Bring milk to 80 degrees.
- Remove from the stove and pour the vinegar, stirring constantly. In this case, the initial product coagulates very quickly and flakes out.
- Cool the pan and put the mass on cheesecloth.
The yield of the final product is more than a kilogram (from fatty cow's milk, a little more can be obtained).
How to use cottage cheese leaven: instruction
In this case, you will get excellent grained cottage cheese:
- Fat-free milk and pasteurize at 70 degrees.
- Cool to 30 ° C.
- We add sourdough to milk (in our case - kefir or sour milk): 5% of its amount.
- We stand at the same temperature for about 2 hours (do not mix).
- Add 1 ml of abomasum (even less) to a liter of mixture. Knead thoroughly to obtain a uniform consistency.
- For even better effect, you can add a little calcium chloride to the mass.
- We cut a bunch of mass (10-15 mm cubes) - if you overexpose, it can become acidic and become very soft-bodied. Then the separation of serum fluid will be difficult.
- We start heating to 40 ° C. If the clot is still acidic, then drain the whey in half and add warm boiled water, after which we continue to heat the mixture.
- Drain the whey and rinse the grain. Cool to 10-15 ° C.
- Mix with lightly salted cream 10% (salt to take 1% of the total mass). The yield of granular cottage cheese is 1 kg of 5-7 liters of skim milk.