Chechil cheese: what is it made of and how to cook it with your own hands?

Surely everyone saw on the shelves of stores unusual in appearance cheese, woven into tight pigtails. This is a national Armenian dish - smoked Chechil cheese. It is especially valuable for what is made by hand, and its bright taste makes the product an excellent snack for any drink, be it wine or beer.

Chechil - brine exhaust cheese, its closest relative is similar Armenian cheese, which is called Suluguni.

The name "Chechil" literally translates as "tangled", which exactly reflects its main feature - form. A braid is formed from the elongated cheese strands and a braid is woven. Sometimes this cheese and in more simple interpretations - in the form of a straw or twisted into a ball.

Chechil's taste is bright, slightly sharp, with pronounced smoked notes. There is no pronounced smell that distinguishes it from other varieties of cheese. In comparison with Suluguni, it has a stronger stratification and fermented milk shades of taste.

Chechil cheese can be made from goat, cow or sheep milk. As a rule, low-fat milk is used for its production, which allows you to make cheese with a fat content of 10%. Due to its low fat content, this cheese is an excellent substitute for fatter varieties for people seeking to lose weight. Chechil calories on average 2 times lower than that of classic cheeses, and is about 300-350 kcal. At the same time, there is practically no carbohydrates in the composition of this sort of cheese, but there is a lot of protein, which makes it an extremely valuable food product.

Chechil contains a large amount of salt (from 4 to 8%), which, in turn, suggests that excessive consumption of it in food can harm the body. This is especially true for people who have problems with urinary and cardiovascular diseases. It is also worth considering that salt retains fluid in the body, which can cause unwanted edema.

When buying cheese, it is worth asking about its composition, as there are now a huge amount of Chechil on the store shelves, which is not smoked by the classical method, but is processed with chemical smoke substitutes, and dyes and preservatives are also added there. All these additives make the cheese less tasty and healthy, but it lasts longer. The maximum shelf life of a quality Chechil is 60 days, and smoked one is 75 days.

The classic form of Chechil cheese is a pigtail that is tightly braided from long strings. This form is patented and created not just for beauty - weaving allows you to preserve the properties of cheese and juiciness of the product.

Chechil can be found on sale in various forms - a straw, a twisted braid, a ball or a wreath. For example, to eat this cheese in a fried form, it is most convenient to use thick sticks. On store shelves, this form is most often from the manufacturer of cheeses Umalat, which has won many positive customer reviews. Spaghetti form is also widespread.

Classic Chechil has a standard color range - from white to yellow. The priority is to get white cheese, as yellowing may indicate the addition of dyes to the product. As for smoked Chechil, its color will vary from beige to brown. Pay attention to the uniformity of color - with natural smoking, the color of the cheese will be transitional.

How to make this traditional Armenian cheese? Chechil is based on milk, which should sour in natural conditions. To speed up the process, ferment is often added to milk, for example, an already sour product and rennet, while heating them. After souring the milk, it is molded under the influence of temperature. Flakes are formed, which are strips up to 10 cm long. They are taken out of serum, cut into thin strips and formed.After that, the cheese pigtails are sent to special smoking chambers.

It takes a lot of time and effort to make this cheese, but the result will be worth it.

Ingredients you need to make Chechil:

• milk (for the preparation of 1 kg of cheese requires about 10 liters of milk);
• rennet or pepsin;
• sour milk, whey or yeast;
• salt.

Milk is left to sour at room temperature, if time is limited, you can add a little leaven to it (in such conditions, 12 hours will be enough for souring). When the milk is ready, it is set on fire and heated to the pasting. At this point, you need to add pepsin or rennet. Thanks to these substances in the pan clot is formed.

The mixture is boiled to a temperature of 50-60 degrees, stirring constantly. The flakes are crushed with a spoon, and gradually a long ribbon is formed, which must be removed from the pan when the desired temperature is reached. The tape is placed on a comfortable surface and cut into thin strips of a thickness not exceeding 5 mm. A pigtail is already formed from these strips. Next, the cheese is placed in cold water for washing, and then in brine for salting. The salt concentration in the brine should be about 15%.

A few days later you can get Chechil and eat or smoke it.

You will learn more about how to make Chechil cheese at home, in the following video.

If you love Chechil, but you want to try something new, then you can easily make interesting dishes on the basis of this cheese with your own hands.

One of the easiest snacks is fried Chechil. To do this, the pigtail is unraveled into individual fibers, or you can immediately take a straw.

For convenience of roasting, it is better to take a deep fryer or the deepest frying pan. It is necessary to pour enough oil so that the sticks of Chechil can be completely immersed in it. The butter warms up, the strips are lowered there, it is desirable that the pieces do not touch each other, since hot cheese can easily stick together. On frying takes no more than a minute. During this time, the sticks increase in volume and acquire a golden appetizing crust.

After frying, the cheese should be dried on a paper towel. Serve a dish like an appetizer, well watered with lemon juice.

When using smoked Chechil, you can try another recipe.

Ingredients:

• cheese braid;
• 1 egg;
• vegetable oil - for frying;
• flour - 3 tablespoons;

Split pigtail into parts. Heat the vegetable oil in deep dishes (it will take about 0.5 liters to make the cheese float like in a fryer). To prepare the batter, you need to slightly beat the egg, then add the flour, mix well with a whisk.

Dip the cheese strips into a batter and throw in boiling oil. Upon reaching the golden color, get and dry on a paper towel. This snack is good to add sauces.