How to make cottage cheese from milk at home. Homemade cottage cheese from milk: step-by-step recipes

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Making cottage cheese in your own kitchen will not be difficult for any housewife. It is customary to use store-bought or farm milk as the main raw material, regardless of fat content. Cottage cheese can be made from ready-made kefir; sometimes milk is added to the resulting consistency.

Homemade cottage cheese has many advantages, because it can be prepared at any time and in the required quantities. This process will be especially relevant for families with children, since there will always be a fresh and healthy product on the table in the house.

Features of cottage cheese production at home

To make 500 grams of cottage cheese you need:

2 liters of milk and 1 liter of kefir;
sieve, slotted spoon (gauze);
2 pans of different sizes.

The milk should be poured into a saucepan, covered with a lid and left in a warm place for 5-6 hours.

During the specified time it should turn sour. For a rich taste, you can add 6 tablespoons of kefir (low-fat sour cream). The resulting mass with sour milk is placed in a saucepan and placed in a water bath.

The contents of the pan with milk are constantly stirred.

As the water boils, sour milk will gradually begin to move away from the edges of the pan, and the yellowish liquid released will indicate the initial stage of the formation of the curd mass. If such signs occur, remove the pans from the heat and cool. Separate the curd from the whey with a slotted spoon or gauze.

In the latter case, a gauze napkin should be placed on the bottom of the sieve and the almost finished product should be carefully placed on it. The edges of the gauze are tightly tied together and suspended to drain the whey. This seemingly simple process has its own tricks.

If the water is overheated, the curd will turn out crumbly; if it is underheated, there will be difficulties in separating the whey and the finished product will be too sour. If there is a goal to obtain cottage cheese with a denser consistency, then a scalded kitchen board is placed on the gauze with the product, and a weight is placed on top. After directly receiving the cottage cheese, many throw away the resulting whey, but in vain. You can use it to make jelly or fruit and berry jelly.

The process of producing cottage cheese based on kefir

Feedstock - kefir Place in a warm place to quickly separate the whey. After separating it, the pan with kefir is placed in a water bath and heated to directly obtain the curd mass. Placing the mixture in a gauze (cloth) bag will help the whey drain out. Production of homemade cottage cheese using the cold method. The following recipe for making cottage cheese is quite popular: 1 liter of kefir in a package is placed in the freezer for 3 days, after which the frozen product is taken out, placed in a colander with gauze and wait for the whey to separate.

The end result is a tender and very tasty cottage cheese.

Preparation of calcined cottage cheese

The product made in this way will have a low acidity level, so it is ideal for dietary and baby food. The main feature of preparing cottage cheese is the addition of calcium lactic acid (diluted with water) at the boiling stage of milk with constant stirring (3 teaspoons per 2 liters of milk). The powder can be purchased at pharmacies. The yield of the finished product will be 300-400 grams. Further, the technology is similar to the methods described above.

Homemade cottage cheese is the most delicious because it is always fresh and natural. You can prepare it in different ways. The final result depends on the quality of the milk. Some people like cottage cheese fatty, with an oily structure, while others like a dietary product, with a small amount of fat and a sour taste.

Read more about how to make cottage cheese at home to suit every taste in the recipes.

Step-by-step recipes for homemade cottage cheese from milk - basic technological principles

Cottage cheese is made from natural (whole) milk. As you know, milk contains natural milk protein – casein. At a temperature of 10-12°C, milk ripens within 12-15 hours. During this time, the structure of the protein changes, and the process of natural ripening begins.

Then the milk is heated. Whey is separated and a clot is formed: under the influence of temperature, casein fibers coagulate (contract), pushing liquid (whey) out of the cells. In production conditions, this process is called pasteurization. It occurs at 63-65°C for 20 minutes. As the temperature increases, the pasteurization time shortens.

In fact, milk coagulation occurs at a lower temperature - 40-45 ° C, but in dairy plants, where huge volumes of raw milk collected from different farms are processed, the increase in pasteurization temperature is due to sanitary standards. When there is absolute confidence in compliance with sanitary standards during milking, in the sterility of the utensils and in the satisfactory maintenance of the animal, homemade milk can simply be heated until the whey begins to separate, and then removed from the stove and allowed to stand until completely cooled.

There is a pattern: the higher the milk pasteurization temperature, the worse the quality of the cheese grain. This is why sour boiled milk never forms a normal curd, although, again, under production conditions soft cheeses are produced from milk processed by high-temperature pasteurization. But there are special technologies for this.

To make homemade cottage cheese, you can use some industrial secrets. Some details of industrial technology for making homemade cottage cheese from milk are in step-by-step recipes and useful tips.

Step-by-step recipe for homemade cottage cheese from fresh milk

Ingredients:

Homemade milk 3.5 l (1 bottle)

Sourdough - the amount depends on the type of fermented milk product or enzyme

Calcium chloride 5% 5 mg (1 ampoule)

Preparation procedure:

1. The first stage is the normalization of milk. Of course, it is difficult to obtain milk of the required fat content using home methods, but the process can be approximately adjusted. The main thing is that the milk is whole. Fat content affects taste and consistency. The industry produces low-fat cottage cheese with fat content of 9% and 18%. Choose your option and skim off the cream as needed.

2. Pour the milk into a saucepan and heat to 35-40°C.

3. Add the starter into warm milk and stir for 5-7 minutes. Leave the pan at room temperature. At the same time, add calcium chloride to speed up the curdling of the milk.

Usually, milk sours without adding starter culture within 7-8 hours. During this time, acidity increases, the product is enriched with lactobacilli, and acquires a characteristic taste. This is an acidic method of making homemade cottage cheese. It is more natural.

Adding sour cream and other fermented milk products speeds up the process by 2 times. Sour cream, yogurt, whey or yogurt is the most optimal way to ferment milk at home - these products can be found in every home. There is only one obligatory condition: fermented milk products must be prepared thermostatically from whole milk.

If desired, replace fermented milk products with pepsin or other enzymes. This is the second, acid-rennet method for preparing homemade cottage cheese from milk, which can be used by replacing sour cream with enzyme in step two of the step-by-step recipe.

4. When a clot appears, place the pan on the stove and heat the raw materials again, stirring, at a temperature of no more than 40-42°C. With strong heating, the quality of the cottage cheese will deteriorate. Fat and calcium will go into whey, and the cheese curd will noticeably decrease in volume and become dry. However, this option is also acceptable, but it’s not for everyone.

5. Break the resulting dense clot into small fractions to speed up the separation of liquid.

6. Place a sieve or colander on a tray, the capacity of which should be at least 3.5 liters, so that the whey does not overflow over the edge of the dish. Cover the sieve with gauze folded in four layers and carefully, gradually pour the fermented milk.

7. When the bulk of the whey has drained, tie the ends of a gauze napkin and hang it over the pan for some more time to compact the cheese curd and remove excess moisture from the product.

From the specified amount of homemade milk you can get 350 - 400 g of fresh cottage cheese.

Step-by-step recipe for homemade cottage cheese from sour milk

Ingredient:

Homemade curdled milk

It happens that the milk has already turned sour, and it needs to be “put into use.” If the product has not been boiled, then it is quite suitable for making homemade cottage cheese. This milk does not require any special additives.

Preparation:

1. The curdled milk needs to be heated. When the temperature rises to 40°C, milk protein coagulates. All this has already been described above, in the basic technological principles of producing homemade cottage cheese from milk.

2. The next step is to separate the whey. Just as in the first step-by-step recipe, place a sieve on a saucepan of suitable volume, and pour the heated yogurt through a gauze layer.

3. Allow the whey to drain to the required moisture level of the curd. You can leave the curd in this position, and to speed up the process of separating the whey, hang it in gauze.

Step-by-step recipe for homemade cottage cheese made from milk (with lemon juice)

This is a step-by-step recipe for making paneer, Indian homemade cottage cheese made from milk. To coagulate casein, Indians use the juice of sour fruits - the result is homemade rennet cheese, with a delicate taste and dense consistency. This cheese is not salty, like feta cheese or feta cheese, so it is more like cottage cheese.

Ingredients:

Milk 6 l

Lemon juice 100 ml

Preparation procedure:

1. Heat homemade milk to 40-50°C.

2. Squeeze the juice from a fresh lemon.

3. Pour it in a thin stream at the edge of the pan on the stove, while stirring the milk in one direction.

4. Do not stop stirring until a thick clot forms.

5. Let the mixture cool and pour through a layer of gauze placed in a colander. You can transfer the curd into cheesecloth using a slotted spoon.

6. Fold the edges of the gauze towards the center. Place a plate on the cheese mass and a jar filled with water on it. The cottage cheese should be compressed.

7. Place the finished head into a tightly sealed container. Place in the refrigerator to ripen for 10-12 hours. Paneer is cut into pieces when serving. It is very good for preparing salads and desserts, as a filling for dumplings and pies.

At the stage of heating the milk, you can add herbs and spices to get an original snack. Hot pepper, garlic, ground coriander, cardamom, and mint are suitable.

Step-by-step recipes for homemade cottage cheese from milk - useful tips and secrets

Not every housewife has a lactometer to determine the fat content of milk. There is a solution: you can approximately determine the percentage of fat content by volume. For example: a bottle contains 3 liters of milk. Place it in the refrigerator overnight. By morning, the fat will rise to the top, since its molecules are lighter and larger than liquid. The fatty mass has a slightly creamy tint and is different in color from white milk. All that remains is to measure the volume of fat mass and determine the percentage of milk and fat. If in a bottle with a volume of 3 liters, the third part is a fat “top”, the milk has a fat content of about 10%. This is a good indicator of milk quality.

Domestic cow's milk has the highest fat content in the cold season, when animals are transferred to winter housing. This milk contains 12% fat content. If you need to prepare low-fat cottage cheese, put the milk in the refrigerator for 7-8 hours, then skim off the cream - the raw materials for the cottage cheese are ready.

To speed up the coagulation of milk protein, add calcium chloride to the raw milk. This additive is also used in the dairy industry. It allows you to increase the volume of cheese grains, enriches dairy products with calcium, which passes into whey during pasteurization of milk. Calcium chloride is a cheap drug that is available at any pharmacy without a prescription. Per liter of milk, 0.5 ml of a 5% solution is sufficient. This is literally 2-3 drops of solution. Chloride is an absolutely harmless drug, but it should not be abused. As the great healer said, medicine differs from poison only in dosage.

Goat milk is a very valuable and dietary product. It contains less fat than cow's milk, but goat's milk also has lower coagulability due to the structural features of milk protein. High-quality homemade goat milk cottage cheese can only be obtained using the acid-rennet ripening method.

The dairy industry produces cottage cheese made from reconstituted (powdered) milk, skim milk, but these methods for making cottage cheese at home are complex and require the use of special household appliances and devices.

The process of making cottage cheese at home takes a minimum amount of time, cost and effort.

However, the product that you prepare yourself will be significantly different from similar competitors that modern manufacturers offer customers.

Homemade cottage cheese contains much more useful substances, which, unfortunately, are present in minimal quantities in factory versions.

1. Under no circumstances should curdled milk be brought to a boil - the cottage cheese will turn out dry and tasteless.

2. The longer the whey drains, the denser and drier the curd becomes.

3. You only need to discard the curd in a colander when the whey has separated well, otherwise the curd will turn out sour.

4. Experienced housewives never pour whey down the sink. Using it you can prepare delicious pancakes, pancakes, jelly, kvass or jelly.

As you can see, there are quite a few ways and recipes for making homemade cottage cheese. All of them are simple and will not take up much of your precious time. So prepare cottage cheese at home and feed your kids a tasty and healthy product.

Homemade cottage cheese recipes

Village cottage cheese

To make classic country cottage cheese, you will need 2 liters of fresh homemade milk, a clean gauze napkin, and two pans, one inside the other.

The milk needs to be poured into a smaller saucepan, covered with a lid and placed in a warm place, for example, near a radiator, for such a time that the milk should sour. Usually this is about a day. For taste and to speed up souring, you can add 2-3 tbsp to the pan. spoons of low-fat sour cream. Then place the pan with sour milk in a large pan, but approximately the same in height, and fill the gap between the walls of the pans with water.

Place both pans on low heat and do not leave the stove for a minute. As the water boils, sour milk will move away from the edges of the pan and a yellowish liquid will appear. At this moment, you urgently need to remove the pans from the heat, remove the smaller pan and cool the semi-finished product. Then place a gauze napkin on the bottom of the sieve and carefully place the curdled milk on it with a tablespoon. Tie the edges of the gauze together and hang the bundle so that the whey gradually drips from it. What remains on the gauze bandage is the cottage cheese. To get a denser cottage cheese, you need to place a weight on the cheesecloth with cottage cheese.

Preparation of calcined cottage cheese

Ready-to-eat cottage cheese is stored in the refrigerator in a glass or enamel container, after putting a couple of pieces of sugar in it. Homemade cottage cheese can be stored in the freezer for one month, but its taste will change slightly. It is strictly not recommended to store the product in plastic bags. If the cottage cheese suddenly becomes sour, then it must be mixed with fresh milk in equal proportions and left for 60-90 minutes. After this, the cottage cheese is placed in gauze (cotton bag) and placed under a press.

Cold method of making homemade cottage cheese

Ingredients:

0.5 l kefir
1 tsp Sahara
1 tsp Sahara
1 tsp Sahara
50 g prunes

Cooking method:

In addition to preparing cottage cheese using the hot method, there is also a way to prepare cottage cheese cold; such cottage cheese is more like a cream. Excellent for feeding babies from a young age. In addition, many different dried fruits go with it.

It will take 25 minutes to prepare the dish:

To prepare cottage cheese in this way, you need frozen kefir; you can put it in the freezer before freezing, or you can also leave it there overnight so as not to wait for freezing during the day.

After complete freezing, remove the bag and defrost the contents without using any auxiliary means, boiling water or warm air. Pass kefir through a fine sieve.

Hang the resulting mass for 20 minutes; it can also be used for baking.

Cold-processed cottage cheese is ready. Now you need to add sugar, dried fruits to it, you can add fresh fruits to taste, you can prepare a healthy and vitamin-rich dessert.

Making cottage cheese using lemon

Take skim milk and pour it into a large container. Take a lemon and squeeze it into milk (for 1 liter of milk - a little more than half a lemon) and mix. This is necessary so that the milk curdles faster. You can, of course, wait for the milk to sour under natural conditions - place the dish with milk and a crust of rye bread in a warm place, for example, near a radiator. However, if you have full-fat milk, you can first prepare homemade yogurt in this way, remove the fat from its surface, and then, when it has stood (this usually takes 1-2 days), prepare cottage cheese. As a starter, you can use store-bought kefir or yogurt (literally a spoon) or the previous starter or whey. If you leave milk to sour without starter, the process of putrefactive fermentation may begin.

You will see how the milk begins to curdle and the whey becomes transparent. There is no need to wait until the milk curds become too dense - your curd will then be too grainy. Strain the whey through cheesecloth - you can then use this whey to make homemade diet bread or pancakes; put the cottage cheese in a separate container and you can eat it.

Quick homemade cottage cheese recipe

Necessary:

2 liters of milk
2 jars (250 g) natural yoghurt

How to cook:

1. Pour 2 liters of milk into a microwave-safe container and heat it to the desired temperature (about 40°). Add 2 jars of natural yoghurt and leave in a warm place until the milk curdles and you get a thick yogurt. This usually takes 10-12 hours, but it depends on the room temperature.

2. Place the bowl of yogurt in the microwave for 15 minutes at maximum power 800 W - the contents will heat up, warming up evenly, and curdle. The clear serum will clearly come off.

3. Carefully transfer the curdled lump into a colander lined with gauze, located above the pan (to collect the whey), being careful not to damage the integrity of the lump.

4. Let the main whey drain, then hang the bundle with cottage cheese for a while so that the whey drains better.

To make cottage cheese at home, you do not need any specialized equipment; accordingly, the costs of the production process will be minimal. As a rule, to make cottage cheese it is enough to have:

two pans of different sizes;
skimmer;
sieve.

At the same time, the simplest recipe allows you to get by with just one pan and gauze. It is advisable to use aluminum pans rather than enamel ones, since in enamel pans the milk may burn slightly when heated, which will negatively affect the taste of the final product.

Raw materials

The main raw material for making cottage cheese is milk, but kefir can also be used. Some recipes will require additional ingredients, such as sour cream. All products used must be natural.– pasteurized milk, which can be purchased at the store, cannot be used.

Room

Of course, there are no special requirements for the premises for organizing home production - an ordinary kitchen is quite suitable, the main thing is that it is clean and that there is enough space for work.

Expanding production

If you want to make not only regular, but also low-fat cottage cheese, you will need a milk separator - a special device that separates milk into skim milk and cream. There are also separators for working with cottage cheese. They separate fermented milk into curds and whey. But such equipment, as a rule, is used only in industrial production.

Technology and recipes

As we wrote above, there are a huge variety of recipes for making cottage cheese, and each of them involves its own technology. Let's describe a couple of the simplest of them - they allow you to produce a product as quickly as possible.

Recipe No. 1

Fresh milk needs to be poured into a small saucepan and placed in a warm place - you can just leave it on the table. The pan must be kept warm for at least 30 hours, without touching the milk during this entire period - this will deteriorate the quality of the curd curd.

After the specified time, the milk will turn into curdled milk and whey liquid. Now you need to put the pan on the stove over very low heat. The curdled milk needs to be heated, but it should not be brought to a boil. To better control the temperature, you can use a water bath - place a saucepan with fermented milk in another larger saucepan with water, and the water should reach no more than the middle of the saucepan with yogurt.

If fermented milk is overheated, the curd may become too hard, which will cause it to crumble, and if the curdled milk is not heated enough, the curd will probably turn out sour, since the whey will not separate well enough.

During heating, the milk mass should not be stirred with a spoon - this will disrupt the process of whey separation. During heating, you need to periodically check the temperature by simply touching the pan to prevent overheating. You need to heat until the characteristic curd clots and clear whey appear, that is, about half an hour. After this, the pan must be removed from the heat and left to cool - it will take about six to eight hours until it cools completely.

Then you need to put the cottage cheese with a slotted spoon on a sieve, or pour the contents of the pan into a jar through cheesecloth, after which you should leave the cottage cheese for a while to drain. If the cottage cheese was placed in gauze, it must be hung over the sink or bathtub; if in a sieve, it must be placed above any container so that the liquid has somewhere to drain. Until the cottage cheese is completely ready, it should drain for about an hour and a half: if you leave it for a longer period, the product may become excessively dry.

Recipe No. 2

This technology allows you to get ready-made cottage cheese even faster.

You need to pour the milk into a jar, put a few tablespoons of sour cream or kefir in there (about 50 grams per liter of milk), and leave it in a warm place for fermentation. Adding fermented milk products will give the cottage cheese a special taste, and in addition, it will significantly speed up this process - depending on the temperature, ripening can take from 12 hours to a day. The milk should not be stirred during fermentation.

When the milk mixture turns into curdled milk, you will need to take a clean saucepan, place a jar in it and pour in enough water so that it is approximately at the same level with the curdled milk. After which you need to remove the jar and put the pan on the fire. After bringing the water to a boil, you need to turn off the heat and place a jar of fermented milk in a saucepan with hot water. Cover the jar with a lid and leave for about half an hour.

After the specified time has passed, the jar must be removed from the water and allowed to stand for another 40-45 minutes. After this, the contents of the jar should be poured onto cheesecloth and the resulting curd clot should be hung over the bathtub or sink for two hours.

Profitability

Based on the fact that about three liters of milk are needed to make one kilogram of cottage cheese, a small subsidiary farm with two cows producing up to ten liters of milk per day can produce an average of six kilograms of cottage cheese daily. The average cost of one kilogram of medium-fat homemade cottage cheese on the market is 250 rubles. Low-fat cottage cheese costs about 300 rubles per kilogram. Net profit per month will thus be about 45-50 thousand rubles. Additional profit can be obtained by selling production by-products - whey and, if a separator was used when processing milk, cream.

There are no particular difficulties in producing cottage cheese at home, and it can bring significant profits, while taking very little time. This is an ideal option for generating additional income from personal farming.

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

Ingredients for cottage cheese:

Milk (fresh) – 3 liters;

Citric acid – 1 tbsp. lie (or juice of one medium lemon).

How to make cottage cheese from milk at home

When starting to cook, I usually immediately prepare a sieve into 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 it can completely cover the sieve.

The next thing to do is pour the milk into a stainless steel or aluminum pan and place it on the stove, turning on high heat.

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 boil (you can tell by tasting the milk with your finger, it must be very hot), we need to turn the heat to minimum, add citric acid or squeezed lemon juice to the milk and stir with a slotted spoon.

After adding acid, you will see how, almost immediately, the milk will curdle and curd flakes will form on its surface. The gas under the pan must be turned off.

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

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

The ends of the gauze with the still wet cottage cheese need to be wrapped (the cottage cheese comes out as if in a gauze bag). So that the cottage cheese is not so wet, we place a flat plate on top of the gauze bundle, on which we place a 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 the gauze. Look, you can even see in the photo that the cottage cheese turned out delicious.

This cottage cheese can simply be served with sugar, sour cream or jam. Also, it is perfect for cheesecakes or can be an excellent filling for baked goods or dumplings.