Cottage cheese is a valuable source of calcium and protein, an indisputable leader among dietary foods recommended for the prevention of a whole “bouquet” of diseases. Today, many housewives refuse sour-milk products manufactured industrially and anxiously collect secrets that tell you how to make cottage cheese from sour milk yourself.

How to make cottage cheese from sour milk in the oven

Benefits of a home-cooked product:

  1. Natural composition, without preservatives and vegetable fats, which stores all the necessary vitamins, minerals, enzymes.
  2. The ability to adjust the juiciness, density and fat content of the dish - homemade cottage cheese is usually obtained soft, layered, with the right amount of acid.

You can cook it in various ways.

The main rule is the same - high-quality, proven milk. It would be nice from a domestic cow (it was previously recommended to boil it!), But it is also acceptable to shop, only necessarily pasteurized, with a short storage period.

For any of the methods we need:

  • sour milk;
  • metal sieve or colander;
  • a large piece of gauze.

Cooking time: ~ 6 - 12 hours.

Sequencing:

  1. We’re not full by 1 cm jar of sour milk (you can take another container, but milk should be fermented immediately in it) we send to a cold oven. Do not cover!
  2. We heat for 40-60 minutes at a temperature set between 120 and 150 ° C.
  3. Turn off the technique, leave the resulting cottage cheese in it until it cools completely, you can at night.
  4. We cover the sieve / colander with two layers of gauze.
  5. Gradually pour the cottage cheese on it, gently draining the serum.
  6. Squeeze the ends of the tissue with a knot - this will turn out to squeeze out most of the unnecessary fluid.
  7. We forget about the cottage cheese for a couple of hours, until the whey drains. If you want to get a dry product, tie the gauze and hang it over a bowl. We wish wet cottage cheese - leave it on a colander.
  8. Periodically check the consistency of the curd mass. Upon reaching the desired density, we transfer the finished product to a storage container.

When cooking in the oven from 3 liters of milk, you can get 700 - 900 grams of delicious cottage cheese.

Note! The amount of the final product and the degree of acid depend on the duration and correctness of the souring of the feedstock. It must ripen, but at the same time do not have time to peroxide. 3-day freshness meets these parameters.

Microwave cooking

The easiest and fastest way to get aromatic curd from yogurt is to use a microwave.

Cooking time: ~ 5 - 15 minutes directly in the microwave oven + several hours for cooling.

Tasty recipe:how to cook cottage cheese pancakes in a pan?

Sequencing:

  1. Pour the sour milk into a container suitable for use in the microwave. It is not necessary to cover it, although this option is also valid.
  2. Turn on the microwave oven at full power (usually 700 - 750 watts) for 5 minutes.
  3. After the beep, check the serum. If it is transparent - cooking is finished, but if its color is milky - you need to add a few more minutes.The amount of time is a conditional parameter, which can only be determined empirically for your furnace. It depends on the features of the microwave, as well as on the shape and material of the container used in it.
  4. Leave the cottage cheese in the resulting liquid for several hours until it cools completely.
  5. The mixture cooled to room temperature is discarded on a sieve to remove excess serum from the finished product.

From a liter of yogurt using a microwave oven, you can get from 200 g of cottage cheese, which depends on the quality of milk and the percentage of protein in it.

With the addition of kefir

When there is no time to wait for the milk to turn sour, you can use kefir and in a couple of hours to cook the most tender curd.

For a liter of milk, we need 0.5 - 1.0 l of kefir 1% fat. The more you take kefir for ripening, the more pronounced the acidity will be in the finished product.

Sequencing:

  1. Bring the milk to a boil.
  2. Remove from the stove, pour kefir into it, stir well.
  3. Leave for at least 120 minutes (and can be overnight). During this time, the cottage cheese has time to "bounce" from the serum.
  4. We filter the finished product through cheesecloth. The less excess fluid will drain in time, the more moist the curd will turn out in the end.

It is interesting that this method is recommended by pediatricians for the preparation of fermented milk products that are optimal for the first feeding.

Slow Cooking Recipe

Cottage cheese in a slow cooker - the most popular "assistant" of a modern housewife - cooks no less simply and quickly than in other ways.

 

The program can be used at your discretion. For example, “yogurt”, “heating”, “baking”, “milk porridge”. Cooking time, respectively, will vary from 15 minutes to an hour. The main condition when choosing a mode is the temperature, which will not bring the liquid to a boil.

Sequencing:

  1. Pour the sour milk into the multicooker bowl.
  2. We select the program that we liked, if necessary, set the temperature to 80 degrees, turn on the device and forget about cooking for a specified period of time.
  3. After the necessary time has passed, turn off the multicooker and let the curd cool down. It takes at least 3 to 4 hours.
  4. We discard the resulting product on gauze, allowing the serum to drain. If necessary, we suspend gauze in a knot or gently wring it out by hand, by analogy with the methods already described.

Fastest recipe

If there is an urgent need to cook home-made cottage cheese, you can use a proven recipe that allows you to get 0.5 kg of the most delicate ricotta in just an hour.

We will need:

  • 3 liters of fresh homemade or store pasteurized milk;
  • a generous pinch of salt;
  • 3 - 4 tbsp. l lemon juice or 2 tsp. citric acid.

Sequencing:

  1. We rinse the pan with cold water, pour milk into it, salt, add lemon juice / crystalline acid.
  2. Heat the resulting mixture over low heat or in a water bath, stirring occasionally.
  3. We continue the previous stage until the appearance of "flakes" and complete separation of serum.
  4. We discard the cottage cheese on cheesecloth and leave for 45-60 minutes to drain the liquid.

You can use a slightly different technology - bring the milk to a boil, remove from the stove, only then salt it and pour in the lemon juice. Next, mix the composition and wait 7 minutes until the liquid begins to curl up in flakes.

At this point, it would be nice to add a tablespoon of fat cream that will make the taste of the finished cottage cheese especially tender and creamy.

After the necessary time has passed for the separation of ricotta from whey, as with all other methods, it is recommended to use a colander and gauze.

Cooking technology without heating

The following are two methods of making cottage cheese from sour milk, excluding its heat treatment:

  1. The yogurt formed as a result of milk fermentation is simply thrown back onto a sieve with gauze. Squeeze out the excess liquid, getting a dairy product, moist and more tender in consistency, than the cottage cheese cooked in the oven, in a water bath, etc.
  2. A packet of kefir is left overnight in the freezer, in the morning the obtained "ice" is removed from the cellophane and sent to a colander covered with gauze until it is completely thawed and the cottage cheese is separated from the whey.

Delicious sour goat milk curd

The technologies for preparing cottage cheese from cow and goat milk are identical. The only difference is that the latter is more valuable. It enhances immunity, has healing properties. That is why cottage cheese is obtained from it easily digestible, low allergenic, maximally saturated with vitamins and minerals. It’s just that in order for the goat’s milk to turn sour, sometimes it takes a lot of time. That is why experienced housewives accelerate this process by boiling and adding salt.

Such manipulations allow you to get goat sour milk literally in a day, subject to fermentation in a warm place. Next, you can choose how to make curd from sour goat milk: in a slow cooker, microwave, or using conventional heating.

Having secured the proposed proven recipes, you can easily master the simple technology of cooking home-made cottage cheese and delight your family with delicious and healthy culinary masterpieces.