We make cottage cheese from milk or kefir according to the best recipes. Fat-free cottage cheese for those who strive for the perfect figure

1. Cottage cheese can be made in two ways: with and without heating. This is a matter of taste and convenience. However, cottage cheese without heating is a little more tender.

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

3. Kefir can also be taken in any fat content. can only be used if you heat it up.

4. The quantity and taste of cottage cheese 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. Again, this is a matter of convenience. You will find a description of the cooking process in a water bath in the recipe for kefir cottage cheese.

6. It is better to heat dairy products in a pan made of aluminum or of stainless steel with a thick bottom. Enamelware not suitable: everything in it can burn.

7. Cottage cheese spread on a colander covered with several layers of gauze. Place a saucepan or some other container under the colander so that the whey flows there.

8. If you leave the cottage cheese in a colander for a couple of hours or even less, then it will turn out wet.

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

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

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

This traditional way curd preparation.

Ingredients

• 2 liters of milk.

Cooking

Leave the milk in a warm place for 1-3 days. Don't mix it up. The time depends on the temperature in the room: the warmer, the faster the milk will 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 go sour in the refrigerator. There it will acquire bad smell and may start to rage. If you notice that the milk in the refrigerator is starting to turn sour, it's best to take it out so that it sours in the right conditions.

Sour milk will look like soft thick jelly, and serum will begin to appear around it. Pour the milk into a saucepan and place over low heat.

Boil, stirring occasionally. Do not overheat the milk, it should be slightly warm. After 10-15 minutes from the start of cooking, curd clots will begin to form in the pan. Remove the pan from the heat and let stand for the same amount of time. Then put the cottage cheese in a colander and let it drain.

2. Homemade cottage cheese from milk without heating

Ready cottage cheese will be more gentle than in the first case.

Ingredients

• 2 liters of milk.

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

Cooking

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

Thanks to lemon juice milk will sour much faster.

Ingredients

• 2 liters of milk;
• 1 lemon.

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

Cooking

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.

Cooking

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

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

Kefir should break up into curd and whey. When this happens, remove the pan from the heat and let it sit for 10 minutes. Transfer the cottage cheese 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 indicated amount, about 200 g of cottage cheese will be obtained.

Cooking

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

Place the bag in the freezer overnight. Kefir should become like a piece of ice. If after 10-12 hours kefir does not become hard as a stone, then it is of poor quality. Such a product will liquid cottage cheese reminiscent of sour cream.

Carefully cut open the bag, put the contents in a colander and wrap in cheesecloth.

Leave kefir at room temperature until completely defrosted.

As you know, cottage cheese is usually made from milk. But with my recipe, there is no need to wait for the milk to go sour. natural way, and the cottage cheese itself will be more tasty, not sour. And most importantly, you can cook such cottage cheese at home and simply and quickly. And so, we master the recipe homemade cottage cheese from fresh (often said sweet), not sour milk. Step-by-step photographs will help you more accurately understand what is happening and how.

Curd Ingredients:

Milk (fresh) - 3 liters;

Citric acid - 1 tbsp. lies. (or the juice of one medium lemon).

How to make cottage cheese from milk at home

Starting to cook, I usually immediately prepare a sieve, on which we will discard the cottage cheese and a piece of clean gauze, folded in two layers. The size of the gauze should be such that you can completely cover the sieve.

The next thing to do is pour the milk into a stainless steel or aluminum pan, put it on the stove, turning on a strong fire.

We need to heat the milk, almost to a boil. During the heating process, I usually stir the milk with a slotted spoon to prevent foam from forming.

As soon as the milk reaches a boiling state (you can understand by tasting the milk with your finger, it should be very hot) we need to make a minimum fire, add to the milk citric acid or squeezed juice from a lemon and stir with a slotted spoon.

After adding the acid, you will see how, almost immediately, the milk curdles and forms on its surface cottage cheese flakes. The gas under the pan must be turned off.

The cottage cheese is heated, now we need to install a sieve on an empty pan and strain the cottage cheese.

The whey flows into the pan, and the grains of cottage cheese remain on the gauze. Let's wait until all the liquid drains, and pour it into the bottle.

The ends of the gauze with the still wet cottage cheese must be wrapped (the cottage cheese is obtained, as it were, in a gauze bag). So that the cottage cheese is not so wet, we put a flat plate on top of the gauze bundle, on which we install the load. For this purpose, I used a bottle of serum. The design is clearly visible in the photo.

After an hour, we remove the oppression and take out healthy, fresh and tasty homemade cottage cheese from gauze. Look, even in the photo you can see that the curd turned out to be appetizing.

Such cottage cheese can simply be served with sugar, sour cream or jam. Also, it is perfect for cheesecakes or can be a great filling for pastries or dumplings.

Everyone knows about the wonderful qualities of cottage cheese and its benefits for our body. But not everyone knows how to make cottage cheese at home.

Curd is extremely beneficial for human body, at the same time, you can cook a lot of healthy and tasty dishes from cottage cheese. To make cottage cheese, we need 2 liters of milk, a clean gauze napkin, two pans that fit one into the other, and a little patience. This process takes me about a day, but the curd turns out well.

Pour the milk into a saucepan, cover it with a lid and put it in a warm place - near the stove or radiator - for such a time during which the milk should turn sour. If you, say, put milk in the morning, then you can be sure that by morning next day it will definitely be ready, although it also depends on the quality of the milk.

Sometimes, for taste, I add a couple of tablespoons of kefir or low-fat sour cream to the pan. Then I put the pan with sour milk in a large pot, but about the same height, and fill the gap between the walls of the pots with water.

Now you need to put the pans with milk and water on slow fire and never leave the stove for a minute. As the water boils, you will see spoiled milk will move away from the edges of the pan, a yellowish liquid will come out. Here it is necessary to urgently remove the pans from the fire, remove the smaller pan and cool the semi-finished product.

Then everything is simple. You put a gauze napkin on the bottom of the sieve and carefully spread it with a tablespoon original product. I tie the edges of the gauze together and hang the knot so that the serum gradually drains from it. What remains on the gauze bandage is the cottage cheese.

It is important to remember that there is still a lot of water in fermented milk. The goal is to get rid of the excess. To better prepare cottage cheese from a clot, it is cut into rectangular pieces in a saucepan, and only then they are transferred to gauze.

It is important to separate the whey correctly.

Overheat the water - the cottage cheese will come out crumbly.

If you do not warm it up, it will be difficult to separate the whey, and the curd will become sour.

If you want to get a denser cottage cheese, then put a kitchen board scalded with boiling water on cheesecloth with cottage cheese and place a load on top.

After getting the curd, many people throw away the whey. But in vain! From whey you can get jelly, fruit and berry jellies and even kvass.

Here's how, for example, you can do whey jelly. For 1 kg of whey we take 120 g of sugar. 30 g of gelatin and 80-100 g of berries from jam. Sugar is added to the whey filtered through several layers of gauze and heated. Better in the form of a syrup prepared with whey. Then, after half an hour, pour gelatin. The mixture is heated almost to a boil. After that, berries from jam are added there and hot jelly is poured into molds.

Try it, very tasty!

Content:

Cottage cheese is a perfect food product, which combines all the beneficial properties of dairy products. High-quality cottage cheese provides the body with easily digestible protein, fats, vitamins, amino acids and minerals (calcium, potassium, phosphorus). It is useful for pregnant and lactating women, for young growing organisms, for people with increased physical activity and the elderly.

Features of cooking cottage cheese

The modern way of making cottage cheese at home, which cannot be said about the industry, has absolutely not undergone any changes and is no different from the process used by our ancestors. All the same, this nutritious sour milk product obtained from well-heated curdled milk (sour milk), placed in linen bag to separate the solid part (cottage cheese) from the liquid part (whey).

Classic cottage cheese recipe at home

There is an ideal "long-term recipe" when mining valuable product goes on its own, without your direct intervention. The whole process is simple, and you can get cottage cheese from milk on the second or third day after its natural fermentation, when, under the influence of temperature factors, whey will separate from yogurt due to the action of live lactic acid bacteria.

To get 1 kg of cottage cheese, cook:

• 3 liters of fresh, preferably homemade, milk;
• 2 capacious containers: one is bigger, the other is smaller;
• colander;
• clean cotton cloth or thick gauze.

Instructions for making cottage cheese at home:

1. Pour the milk into a resealable container, do not disturb it, leave it to sour for a couple of days (the rate of fermentation will depend on temperature factors).
2. After the container with the fermented, already dense, mixture, put on a slow fire for water bath. Cook, stirring gently, for 15-20 minutes until curd clots form.
3. As soon as the slightly heated mass exfoliates into cottage cheese and whey, set it aside until it cools completely.
4. Next, prepare a capacious dish, place a colander on it, which is covered with a thick cotton clean cloth (a sieve is not suitable for such manipulation).
5. Pour the mass onto the prepared cloth, tie it in a knot and hang it over the prepared container so that the separated whey can drain into it. As soon as the whey stops dripping, the curd is ready.

How to make curd quickly

If you don't have the time of 2-3 days, try to make "instant" curd, while you can "play" with the final result of the taste of the product and its characteristics. You will get a solid consistency of cottage cheese when the yogurt drains for a day, soft tender cottage cheese is prepared almost immediately - by the usual mechanical squeezing of whey by hand. The fat content and the amount of product at the output will depend on the percentage of fat content of the original components.

To get 200 g of cottage cheese, you will need the following ingredients:

• 500 ml of milk;
• 500 ml of kefir.

The cooking process looks like this:

1. Pour the milk into a container of sufficient capacity (at least 1.5 liters) and bring it to a boil.
2. As soon as the moment comes when the milk begins to boil, reduce the strength of the fire and immediately begin pouring kefir into the boiling liquid in a thin stream.
3. Then add a little fire and start to slowly stir the mass.
4. When the coagulation process (separation of whey from protein) begins, turn off the heat, cover the dish with a lid and leave the mixture alone for a while (coagulation will still occur in the cooling workpiece).
5. Then do everything as usual: throw the cooled mass on a dense gauze and, tying it in a knot, hang it to drain the serum.

The subtleties of cooking cottage cheese at home

You can cook cottage cheese at home as from home whole milk, and from pasteurized shop. Rustic product cow's milk will be fatter, more delicate in taste and cheaper in cost. Cottage cheese from milk from the counter will turn out to be more fat-free, light, fine-grained, less tender and twice as expensive.

Whatever milk you choose initially for making cottage cheese, there are certain nuances, without knowing which you may end up with a low-quality product:

• Souring milk should be natural, without your intervention and in no case in the refrigerator.
• During the warming up of already sour milk, the main thing is not to overheat it, since if the curdled milk is exposed to excessive temperature, the curd will turn out to be fine-grained, and its taste will be hard and dry.
• If, on the contrary, the semi-finished product, while heating it in a water bath, you will not bring it to desired temperature- at the output you will get a rubber mass, the taste is completely different from cottage cheese.
• The green color of whey, which occurs when sour milk is heated, indicates that the yogurt has “ripened” enough.

It is worth considering that the final mass of the cooked product will also differ: the yield of cottage cheese from three liters homemade milk will be much more (about 1 kg) than from the same amount of store (600-700 g).

Types of cottage cheese

Like the rest fermented milk products, according to the production technology, it is customary to classify cottage cheese. With this product, they do it according to the method of preparation (separate and traditional) and according to the fat content.

What is cottage cheese

By fat content, cottage cheese is divided into:

• fat-free (% fat up to 1.8);
• lean (fat content less than 3%);
• bold (9%);
• classic (from 4-18%);
• fatty (% fat content not less than 18).

The traditional way of making cottage cheese is acidic (prepared on the basis of skimmed milk using sourdough) and rennet (pasteurized milk is used, in this case the sourdough is supplemented with the enzyme pepsin).

At separate way get granulated skimmed cottage cheese, which is prepared from skimmed skimmed milk. In this way, when adding cream, you can get cottage cheese of any fat content.

Making cottage cheese from milk

At home, all the specifics and technology for making cottage cheese from milk are the same and uncomplicated. Milk is pasteurized, cooled and seasoned with sourdough (kefir, sour cream, yogurt, fermented baked milk). Standard proportions: 3-4 tablespoons of sourdough are used for 1 liter of milk.

The prepared mixture is mixed and placed for 8-10 hours in a warm place. After that, the curd clot is separated from the whey. Ready-made cottage cheese can be flavored with sour cream, if you want to get a higher-calorie product, cream or fruit.

Kefir cottage cheese at home

Curd made from kefir will have a delicate, soft texture, but have sour taste. It will be good to use such cottage cheese for the preparation of a variety of curd products or as independent dish with the addition of fruit or sweet jam. Preparation of cottage cheese from kefir is similar to the process of obtaining it from milk: kefir lends itself heat treatment, after which the curd is separated from the whey.

The recipe for obtaining cottage cheese from frozen kefir is considered interesting: place a lump of sour milk frozen in the freezer at room temperature in a cloth bag. A few hours later, after the process of separating the liquid part from the solid, you will receive the long-awaited delicious product.

How to cook fat-free cottage cheese at home

Cottage cheese made from skimmed milk is dietary and at the same time full of energy, containing all useful material, product. Fat-free cottage cheese is ideal for people on a low-fat diet, with less than 1.8% fat per 100g.

Pasteurized non-fat or 1% milk is used for this process. The entire cooking procedure is similar to obtaining cottage cheese from regular milk, the only difference is that the fermentation of such a product naturally will be much longer, therefore, to speed up the process, starter cultures are used in the form low-fat yogurt or kefir. To sour one liter of milk, you need 2-3 tbsp. l. leaven.

How to make grainy cottage cheese

Variety ordinary cottage cheese - granular cottage cheese- dietary low-calorie, no contraindications food. It is prepared from pasteurized skimmed milk with the use of a special ferment - calcium chloride. The special taste of this product is achieved due to the saturation of fat-free curd grains with milk cream and salt.

To prepare such cottage cheese at home, you will need products:

• 1 liter of skim milk;
• 1.5 st. l. calcium chloride;
• 6 art. l. cream (the fat content of the cooked cottage cheese will depend on the initial% fat content of the cream);
• salt to taste.

The cooking process is quick and easy:

1. In a non-enameled container, heat the milk well, almost bringing it to a boil.
2. After turning off the heat, add calcium chloride and mix thoroughly.
3. The composition must stand for a while to separate the curd grains from the liquid.
4. Separate curd from whey.
5. Salt the already dry product and add cream. Grainy homemade cottage cheese is ready.

Making cottage cheese

On your own, you can try to make another healthy and nutritious dairy product - cottage cheese cheese.

To do this, you will need the following products:

• 200 g homemade fatty cottage cheese;
• 200 ml of milk;
• a mixture of one egg and 50 g of butter;
• 0.5 tsp soda;
• salt, spices to taste.

getting ready homemade cheese So:

1. Place homemade cottage cheese (it is better if it is grainy, with a low whey content) in a bowl, pour it with milk and bring the whole mixture to a boil.
2. After boiling, reduce the heat, stirring gently, make sure that the entire contents of the saucepan are evenly heated.
3. As soon as whey separates in the dish, discard the resulting curd lump in a colander or a dense layer of gauze.
4. Dry curd mass transfer to a cauldron, in which you will cook the cheese further.
5. Add a mixture of butter, eggs, soda and salt to the semi-finished product. Stir.
6. Next, cook the whole mass over low heat for 5-8 minutes, stirring constantly.
7. The readiness of the cheese is easy to determine: it will stretch, become sticky, viscous and begin to lag behind the walls of the cauldron.
8. Pour over hot cheese into the prepared form and leave to harden.

How to cook cottage cheese at home - look at the video:

After cooking homemade cottage cheese, you will have useful product- whey, which can be used as in cooking for cooking various pastries, and in home cosmetology.

Curd is very useful and valuable fermented milk product. Unfortunately, we are not always able to purchase it from the people who make it, and cottage cheese from the store is not always High Quality. But you want to please yourself and your loved ones with real homemade cottage cheese. But you can always make it at home.

The benefits of cottage cheese

• Thanks to him useful properties it supports our body. After all, it contains a huge amount of protein. It is protein that we need for proper digestion and healthy functioning of the body. Thanks to him, our nervous system and bones. It is especially necessary to eat cottage cheese for children, the elderly and pregnant women, as well as suffering diabetes, people with disabilities gastrointestinal tract.
• Cottage cheese helps our stomach to establish microflora, suppress putrefactive bacteria. As for its absorption, it is the lightest of all fermented milk products.
• Also, cottage cheese must be eaten by those who have damaged bones, suffered an illness, are losing weight, building up their muscle mass. In general, cottage cheese is needed by everyone, both sick and healthy.
• In baby food, too, can not do without cottage cheese. Already from six months, cottage cheese is introduced into complementary foods for a child. It helps to properly develop the skeletal system of babies, provides correct work children's intestines, helps to have healthy teeth. The best is cottage cheese, which is made from goat milk. Such cottage cheese is hypoallergenic, because it does not contain lactose at all.

Of course, the easiest way is to go and just buy cottage cheese in the store, but for sure it is useful, it is best to cook it at home. It can be made from milk or kefir.

Recipes for making cottage cheese at home

Making cottage cheese at home is not a big problem. The most important thing is to separate the whey in a timely manner when the curdled milk is heated. Because if you overheat, you get hard curd. And if removed too early, the curd will be sour.

Even if you don't succeed the first time, don't despair. This is a matter of practice. Next time it will definitely work. Always start your trials with a large number milk, for example, from one liter. The amount of cottage cheese that you get directly depends on the amount of milk and its fat content.

Cottage cheese from milk at home

• First, take one liter of milk. Pour it into a saucepan and leave it in a dark place until it turns sour. This usually takes about a day at room temperature.
• Then we put sour milk on the stove or in a water bath. It depends on how easy it is for you to control the process. During the cooking process, you will see how curd pieces depart and the serum is completely separated. This may take 30 to 40 minutes. Everyone is different.
• Then, having collected all the cottage cheese, put it on a clean cheesecloth and hang it by the corners or just leave it in a colander. As soon as all the liquid has drained, the curd is ready.
• Even if you are unable to purchase fresh milk from farmers, you can still cook cottage cheese at home. This can even be done with pasteurized milk, which is sold in every store.

Homemade cottage cheese from kefir

The same goes for kefir. good cottage cheese. To prepare it, take kefir (preferably the freshest) and heat it in a saucepan for about 30 minutes. Then leave it in the same pan until it cools completely. And after that, filter everything through a sieve or gauze. You will get no less tender and tasty homemade cottage cheese.

Storage conditions for cottage cheese

It is necessary to store homemade cottage cheese at a temperature of 2 to 6 degrees Celsius. Shelf life this product must not exceed 14 days. It is desirable to pack cottage cheese as tightly as possible. Alternatively, you can, of course, freeze it, thereby extending the shelf life of this product. But it is better to eat it while it is fresh, or just cook from it. favorite dish your family.

The most popular cottage cheese dishes

There are options for recipes that are prepared on the basis of cottage cheese. great amount. The most popular are:

• Creative casseroles.
• Vareniki with cottage cheese.
• Syrniki.
• Sweet curd mass.
• Cheesecakes with cottage cheese.
• Easter.

Most of these dishes are suitable for baby food. Cottage cheese, which you cook at home, will diversify your daily diet well.

Be sure to make cottage cheese at home. You will not be able to buy such cottage cheese anywhere. Be sure to please yourself and your beloved household with curd snacks. It will be not only tasty, but also very useful!