Cheese pickle is a self-made solution consisting of salt and water. It is believed that in order to make 10 liters of brine, on average 2.5 kg of salt and 7.5 liters of water will be needed. How to make cheese pickle correctly? Do I need to cook cheese first and should a purchased product be poured with homemade brine?
Cheese pickle
To use the brine, first you need to cook homemade cheese, which will be simply excellent for the sample. In taste, it will resemble the Adyghe.
To do this, you need the following ingredients:
- 3 liters of milk;
- 1 liter of kefir;
- 1.5 teaspoons of salt.
Step-by-step cooking instructions
Cooked kefir should be put on low heat and wait until the cottage cheese begins to separate, and a greenish-colored liquid appears below. After that, the cottage cheese should be filtered using a colander covered with gauze. The resulting cottage cheese can be removed in the refrigerator, and the serum should be poured into a liter jar and let it sour for 2 days.
After two days, it is necessary to take fresh milk, bring it to a boil and, having lowered the fire, pour in a saucepan of milk a cheese brine - ready-made whey. On low heat, milk should curl up and give all the protein. Cheese rises, separating from whey. After that, the fire on the stove can be extinguished and the contents of the pan drained into a colander, previously covered with fresh gauze.
Add salt to the filtered cheese and mix the resulting product thoroughly. Next, it must be suspended for 30 minutes in gauze, so that the glass is all liquid. When half an hour has passed, the head of homemade cheese should be formed from the mass in gauze and placed under oppression.
After waiting a couple of hours, you can remove the cheesecloth and chop the finished home product. From this amount of milk is obtained, as a rule, half a kilogram of brine cheese. If the whey remains, one more head of homemade cheese can be prepared from it according to this recipe.
In the event that the cheese turned out to be very salty, it must be doused with boiling water before use. Another option is to dip the product in boiled water or milk a couple of hours before eating. To achieve a more delicate creamy taste, it is necessary to put cheese for a couple of days in milk. To give it piquancy, you need to dilute 350 grams of salt in 1 liter of boiled water and pour the cheese with the brine obtained for another 1 day. Then test the product and either leave it for another 1-2 days, or change the brine to a lighter one by adding 200 grams of salt in 1 liter of water. In the same solution should be stored cheese that was previously soaked in milk.
How to make a pickle for cheese?
In the event that the homemade cheese is already ready, and the brine was not at hand, you can use the following recipe to make it.
For brine, you will need the following ingredients:
- 65 grams of salt;
- 500 ml of water.
Ready cheese must be cut into pieces about 10-15 cm thick. To prepare a brine for cheese, salt should be dissolved in boiled water. Then leave the salted solution until it cools to room temperature. Then chopped slices of cheese with brine and salted them for 1-2 days. After the allotted time, the resulting home product can be consumed as food.
Georgian cuisine
If you prepare Georgian cheese brine, you need to prepare the following ingredients:
- 1 liter of water;
- 200 grams of salt;
- 50 grams of sugar.
Add 1 liter of water to the required amount of salt and sugar. Pre-cut the cheese into medium-sized pieces, put the resulting product in a bowl and pour water. Then drain the liquid, measuring the required amount of water, and boil it with sugar and salt. Let the brine cool down a little, then strain and pour cheese on it, putting a plate on it, and press on top of the plate.
How to save cheese?
So that the cooked cheese does not spoil for as long as possible and retains its beneficial substances, it is necessary to learn how to store it correctly. Useful for this:
- brine;
- storage tank;
- salt;
- sugar;
- the cloth;
- foil.
The better quality homemade cheese, the longer it will be stored. It is important that it does not release a large amount of moisture. In no case should its packaging be raised or contain sticky crumbs. When the cheese crumbles or dries from different directions, it is likely that it is cooked for a relatively long time.
Therefore, it is better to leave the cheese in the brine in which it was made. It will serve as an additional means of protecting the fermented milk product, a kind of preservative that protects it from premature spoilage. Cheese with brine is tightly closed in a storage container and remains edible for several weeks. If the cheese was bought separately without brine, you can make it yourself at home by preparing a slightly salted solution. You can also leave the cheese in a plastic container by wrapping it in a damp cloth or aluminum foil first. In addition, a small piece of refined sugar can be placed next to it.
Before cutting the cheese, the knife should be doused with hot water. So the product will not crumble when sliced.