Home-cooked curd can not be compared with the store: cottage cheese is much fresher, tastier, more nutritious and healthier. Unlike products from the store it is completely natural, it does not include any vegetable fats, no artificial additives. A cook a cheese at home is a snap.

Product Selection

The most important thing in making quality cheese - a choice of milk from which the cheese is ready. Because of bad milk cheese does not turn out good. Therefore, the choice of raw materials should focus on.

Of course, you can cook cottage cheese and skimmed, and even skim milk. Of course, the taste of the cheese will be inferior to the taste of fat cottage cheese, but the calorie content of the product will appeal to everyone who is trying to limit myself for the sake of a slim figure Slim figure: acquire and hold . The main thing is that the milk is natural, not powder - the last good cheese may not be possible.

Village milk is better not buy anywhere, but in the shops or in the markets, where milk quality is checked, or directly from farmers. We need complete confidence in the purity of milk and no infections in it.

Some of the technology of preparation of curd based on the use of dairy products - sour milk, buttermilk, yogurt finished, yogurt. Of course, these products must be of high quality, clean and fresh.

The classic way

Traditionally, cottage cheese made from sour - sour milk. The milk is poured into a jar or pan and leave in a warm place for a day (in the summer), or three or four days (in winter). A little secret: to accelerate the process can be added to milk or a slice of rye bread, a spoonful of sour cream Smetana: untold riches of Russian cuisine .

During the fermentation of milk should not be stirred. Readiness is determined by the sour sour smell and inhomogeneous structure of the product with traces of bubbles that rise up from the bottom of the dishes. Sour should be tight - it should not flow like milk.

Now you need to remove the remaining cream with the milk, and put the pot with yogurt on a very low heat. Ten minutes later, the contents of the pan should be mixed, and experienced hostess recommended not to mix in a circle, and making movements with a spoon from the bottom up. The temperature of the yogurt should be 37C (that is barely warm when checked by hand).

Once the milk is heated to the desired temperature, turn off the heat and leave the pan with sour for a day in a warm place. After cooling the mass stratified into curds and whey. Curd should be put in a bag made of white cotton cloth or folded in several layers of cheesecloth and hang on tank draining whey for a few hours. Once the serum stops flowing from the curd, the product is ready. From a liter of milk will turn out about 200 grams of cheese. And the rest of the serum can be used for making delicious pancakes or yeast dough.

Simplified method

Sometimes yogurt is not heated, and immediately shift in a gauze bag, and hung up. Thus it turns out cheese with a very delicate structure. But this method can be used only if the milk well ferment, i.e. yogurt to obtain a dense and not liquid, fluid.

From a liter of milk can be prepared about 250-300 grams of curd. Cottage cheese is moist and soft, ideal to eat it in its natural form.

A quick way

Sometimes no time to wait until the milk turns into curd. In this situation, you can make "instant" cheese. On the palate, it is indistinguishable from a classic, but its structure is somewhat coarser. This cottage is well suited to casseroles, cheesecakes and other dishes.

You will need an equal amount of milk and yogurt. Kefir should be put into the refrigerator, and put the milk on the stove and bring to a boil. At the time when the milk comes to a boil, and will rise in the pan froth "cap" should be added to it all at once cold yogurt. Exactly one minute off the fire. Weight must cool down at room temperature, after which it shift in a gauze bag and left to the moment of the cheese whey drained. Delicious, ready to sour curd. To make it fit, and low-fat milk and low-fat yogurt.

Cottage cheese from the freezer

Can be prepared from the curd and only kefir, even without heating. Cottage cheese in this case becomes quite sour, but gentle and soft as cream.

From one liter of yogurt Kefir: a unique drink for health and harmony   We get about 200 grams of cheese. Kefir (you can even use low-fat) should be poured into the bag and put in the freezer. When frozen yogurt, it should be set (of course, without the package) into a cloth bag and left at room temperature to glass serum. After a few hours of gentle cottage cheese will be ready.

Some are prepared in such a way from sour milk curd. This cheese is obtained less acidic, a very pleasant aroma of baked milk and sweet cream shade.

Basic rules for the preparation of cottage cheese

Whatever cooking method is chosen, for a delicious cheese must follow certain rules:

• The milk must be of good quality. From powdered milk curds obtained by fine-grained and very tasty;
• Sour milk should at room temperature rather than in a refrigerator;
• During cooking, it can not stir the yogurt;
• It is better not to use enamel ware for heating the milk;
• High temperatures - an enemy of delicious cheese. If heat above 37 degrees curdled, the curds get tough, rough texture. Kefir heat is not recommended.

Maria Bykov

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