How to cook hard cheese from cottage cheese at home?

To prepare hard cheese at home, you need very fresh and high-quality products. They will not be so much.Milk is better to take home or rustic in the market, or shop, but with high fat content. Cottage cheese is also better to make yourself out of milk, since its taste is more delicate, and the consistency is softer.

In some recipes you may need butter, kefir, sour cream, eggs, spices.

Required utensils for cooking cheese from cottage cheese and milk - a large volume pan with a thickened bottom or cauldron. To remove excess liquid from the product, you will need gauze, which is better to buy at the pharmacy.

It may seem to some that cooking cheese at home is much more profitable than buying. This statement is not entirely correct and depends on the quality and price category of the products used. To get high-quality cheese at the outlet, initially fresh and tasty products are required. It will also take time to ripen cheese and patience. Only this way you can feel like a real cheese-maker.

The proposed recipe is simple to prepare, suitable for beginners trying to cook cheese for the first time, and almost always pleases with the result. To cook hard cheese from cottage cheese you need: 1000 ml of milk, 1 kg of home-made cottage cheese, 1h. Spoonful of salt and soda, 2 eggs, butter 90-100 g.

Grind between big fingers of cottage cheese between your fingers, put milk in a saucepan (with a thick bottom) on the fire, heat, preventing boiling, pour cottage cheese into it, often stir with a wooden spatula.

In a separate pan with a non-stick coating, heat (but not boil) the butter. Stirring quickly, so as not to curl add eggs, soda and salt, pressed cottage cheese. It is required to intensively stir the mass with a wooden spatula for about 20-30 minutes until the mixture becomes homogeneous. The mass should thicken, it will look like a friable, elastic lump, it is good to stick out from the walls of the pan and blade, then you can turn off the fire. The longer the cheese is cooked at this stage, the tighter, harder will be the finished cheese.

Put the resulting cheese in a plastic container, after laying the bottom with cling film. Tamp the cheese mass, cover with cling film and put in the refrigerator for 3-4 hours. For a variety of cheese, each time you can add a new taste, adding various spices at the final stage of cooking: chopped garlic, paprika, curry, black, red pepper, chopped olives or olives, nuts, mushrooms, any greens. Lovers of salty cheese can increase the rate of salt.

Unusually delicate flavor gives boiled potatoes to homemade cheese. To make such a cheese, it is necessary to take equal parts of boiled (without peel, in salted water) potatoes and cottage cheese - 200 g each, 10 egg yolks, salt, cumin, or dill seeds to taste.

Boiled potatoes should be thoroughly kneaded without crumbling in a tolkushkoy or in a blender, sprinkle with salt, add a little dill seed or cumin, egg yolks. Mix thoroughly and put the curd. Set the bowl with potato and cottage cheese mixture in a water bath and cook for a short time - 10-15 minutes, mix all the time intensively.

Transfer the mixture into a pre-cooked piece of gauze, folded 4-6 times, or into a linen bag, tie it, put on a dish. Set on top of the bag of cheese press - 2 liter jar of water or saucepan. For better stability, place a cutting board on the bag and then a jar of water.

Unusual pattern when cutting this homemade cheese can be called openwork or marble. The taste of the cheese is pleasant, special.For its preparation, you will need sour cream 20% fat - 500 g, 8 eggs, milk - 2 l, 200 ml of freshly squeezed carrot juice, 2 tsp salt.

First of all, it is necessary to distribute all products equally into two parts: 250g. sour cream, 4 eggs, 100 ml of carrot juice, 1 l. milk, 1 tsp of salt. In a saucepan, bring one portion of milk to the boil, add salt and the mixture (mix in a separate bowl) of carrot juice, sour cream, eggs. After about 5 minutes of boiling, the layering of the milk occurs, the mixture becomes homogeneous. Cast the mass into a colander, previously covered with two-layer gauze.

When the liquid is drained from the first batch of cheese, it is necessary to shift it to another bowl and in its place place the second batch of white cheese. After there is no liquid in the white part of the cheese (in 10–15 minutes), combine both parts in a colander and mix slightly.

Tie a cheesecloth in a bag, hang it for dripping whey over a basin or over the sink for half an hour. After that, set the load on the cheese bag for 6-7 hours, and send it to the same time in the refrigerator for ripening.

This cheese is similar in texture to melted cheese, and the taste sensations are much better, like all homemade products. For its manufacture does not need milk. Fresh cottage cheese will be needed - 1 kg, butter - 200-210 g, chicken eggs - 2 pcs. Soda - 1.5-2 tsp, salt, additives and fillers - on request.

An additional saucepan is required, as the cheese will be steamed on a steam bath, which needs to be half filled with water and boiled. In a large bowl or sauté pan mix the cottage cheese, softened chopped butter, eggs, salt and soda. For a homogeneous mass without lumps, you can beat the mixture with a blender.

At this stage, it is best to put in advance prepared supplements in the form of greens, chopped ham, mushrooms, tomatoes, favorite spices. Pour the liquid mixture of uniform consistency into a convenient form and leave to cool. Creamy cheese after cooling is best left to stay in the fridge for a couple of hours. Hand-cooked melted cheese is easily spread on bread, ideal for breakfast.

The recipe for hard cheese in the video below.