Homemade cheese (hard) or cottage cheese (soft cheese) has before the store, i.e. factory, a number of advantages and benefits. By doing it, you are guaranteed to use only natural, environmentally friendly products, especially if you have your own cow or goats. You can vary the fat content of the product, experiment with its taste, ultimately achieving exactly the option that suits you best.
Cheeses
Before talking about how to make cheese at home, let's decide on the product itself. Firstly, as already noted, it can be soft, nostril. We call such a product cottage cheese or curd mass. Secondly, the cheese can be hard, with holes in the eyes. This is important to learn for those who want to know how to make
cheese at home. But the theoretical part is not finished. Depending on the type of raw material, the product may be from cow's
milk, goat, sheep or mixed type. For cottage cheese, the best option is cow. For solid - the rest. Although from the cow cheese "with holes" are not bad. But mixed ones are still more suitable for this.
Cheese and curd mass
And now specifically about how to make cheese at home from cow's milk. It should sour well - either to a density, or to the formation of pieces and separation of serum. If desired, tops (cream, sour cream) can be removed, and then the curd will have a low fat content. Or leave - the cottage cheese will turn out to be fat, tasty, nutritious.
Gently pour a jar of milk (from 3 liters or more - how much you have) into a saucepan and put on fire. Watch carefully for temperature. In no case should the milk boil - then the cheese will turn out to be hard, rough, like rubber. If you want a brackish flavor - salt, add seasonings and spices. Sweetish - add some vanilla sugar. Let the temperature in the pan reach about 35 degrees. And check it this way: put your finger in the brew. If tolerant - let it get warm. Hot - everything, remove from the fire. Milk is already boiled in the curd mass. On a colander or sieve, a piece of gauze spreads in several layers, is attached over some container (if you want to collect whey) and the contents of the pan are poured out there slowly. Then the edges of the gauze are twisted, straining the cottage cheese and giving it a round shape. Fasting this bundle with the product can be hung to drain excess liquid, or put under the press. Here's how to make cheese at home - in an hour you can enjoy a wonderful dish of your own making, eat it with homemade sour cream. And the serum will be used for baking or making okroshka.
Hard cheese
Now the turn of the "Dutch" homemade. How to make cheese at home, so that it looks like a store in consistency? To do this, in addition to milk, you need “rods” - a gastric enzyme or abomasum of a young lamb or kid (you harvest it yourself, buy from the market or in the store). Rennet substitutes are also widely available on sale. Consider options for how to make
goat cheese at home. However, this applies to any milk. In 100 grams of cold boiled water, you need to dissolve a piece of the enzyme or a tenth of the package with a substitute. Then we take fresh whole milk (about 7.5-8 liters), put on gas, heat up to + 35-40 degrees. Pour in the dissolved enzyme. For two to three minutes, the resulting product should be thoroughly kneaded. After 40 minutes or an hour, the milk thickens, it begins to resemble jelly. You can leave it this way, but you can cut it into cubes of arbitrary size. In milk, before thickening, add the desired spices.
And this is how you can cook a very popular variety of cheese - homemade cheese. Any milk you have is just fresh. Volume - two and a half liters. Enzyme - a quarter of a teaspoon. Spices - at will (it is possible without them). The enzyme must be dissolved in a small amount of water, milk is heated to + 45-50. Pour in the enzyme, stir. Let it brew for about 20 minutes. Then, for about half an hour, beat the resulting mass with a whisk. Or with a mixer, just don’t put a lot of turns. Gradually, the mass thickens, hardens. It is necessary to throw it into a colander, form it into a ball or “head”, leave it for 20 minutes. The product that you have is called a “ghoul.” It is used for dumplings, pies, cheesecakes, etc. And to turn it into feta cheese, we prepare brine from the following calculation: 2-3 tablespoons of salt are taken per liter of water. Put cheese there for a day to be completely covered.
Try, experiment, and let everything work out for you!