Curd cheese from kefir in the freezer, sour cream, fermented baked milk, cottage cheese, milk, sour cream. Recipe with photos step by step

Publication in the group: Dishes from cottage cheese, dairy products

Curd cheese, whose consistency resembles cream or thick sour cream, is popular in the cuisine of many countries, but Italy is rightfully considered its homeland. Mascarpone, ricotta, almette, cream and curd cheeses are widely in demand, but they are quite expensive and not always safe in composition. There are several simple ways to prepare a worthy replacement for “elite” cheeses at home: from kefir in the freezer, by curdling any dairy products, with or without heating. The product is universal and can be the basis of both sweet, salty or neutral compositions.

It is added to the following products:

cold snacks (salted or unleavened);
baking filling or dough ingredient;
preparing cream cheese for cakes, filling cakes, pancakes;
sauces for meat, mixed, vegetable dishes;
filling for rolls, coating for pizza or canapés.

This product, traditional for Italy, is a necessary ingredient in many national dishes: lasagna, ravioli, soups, pasta sauce, salads and desserts. It is convenient to use curd cheese in the daily menu as a spread for breakfast sandwiches or as a replacement for sweet curd masses.

A simple recipe for curd cheese made from kefir

The easiest and most inexpensive way to make ricotta yourself does not require mixing, heating or other complex manipulations with products.

Curd cheese made from kefir - a simple recipe.

The total preparation time for the cheese is at least 16 hours, but personal participation in the process will not exceed half an hour.

Composition of ingredients

Original Italian ricotta is an intermediate product between cottage cheese and traditional cheese. It is most often produced from whey, removing the residual amounts of protein and fat from it. When making it at home, on the contrary, they try to use as whole a dairy product as possible, which increases the yield of the finished cheese and improves its taste. The recipe requires only one ingredient - kefir, the choice of which determines the taste and consistency of the dish. If possible, the product is taken with the highest fat content, as natural as possible, or from homemade raw materials.

The lower the initial fat content, the less cheese you will get at the end. With a natural composition and a fat content above 3.0%, 2 liters of kefir yields about 600 g of pasty cheese. Kefir for curd cheese is often combined with yogurt, sour cream, and any other fermented milk product. If necessary, you can completely replace kefir with these ingredients. Italian ricotta is prepared from a mixture of different dairy products, using cow, goat, and sheep raw materials. Such mixtures are considered the best option for obtaining tasty, rich cheese.

Step-by-step cooking process

Curd cheese made from kefir in the freezer is simple not only in composition, but also in preparation technology. To prepare, you only need to freeze the product. When purchasing kefir packaged in plastic bags, it is simply placed in the freezer without unpacking. For other spills, you will have to pour the product into freezer molds.

Preparation:

Kefir of different quality in the freezer on different modes completely freezes from several hours to half a day. Therefore, most often, the bags are left to cool overnight. In this state, dairy products can be stored for up to 6 months without loss of quality.
Before cooking, prepare a large sieve or colander by placing it on a large saucepan so that the liquid can drain freely.
Line the container for expressing with cotton cloth or gauze in 4–6 layers. The edges and corners should be long enough that they can be tied later or completely covered over the top.
Frozen kefir is removed from the refrigerator and removed from packaging. Briquettes can be used whole or split into pieces. Whole pieces will take about 12 hours to thaw, crushed raw materials will soften faster.
As the product thaws, the whey will flow through the sieve or colander holes into the pan. A creamy mass remains on the fabric.
If the mass is small, it is convenient to hang the kefir over the dishes, gathering the fabric like a bag. This way the liquid will drain faster.
After the kefir is completely defrosted, the construction of the pan and colander can be placed in the refrigerator or left at room temperature.

To obtain curd cheese with a creamy consistency, it is enough to strain the whey for 4-5 hours after thawing. To give the cheese a dense structure, the edges of the fabric should be tucked in, placed on top of the kefir mass and pressed down with slight pressure. For the specified number of components, a weight of 1.5 kg is sufficient, for example a can of water. Under pressure, the mass is compressed to a state where it can be cut with a knife.

In addition to 500 g of dense curd cheese, more than 1 liter of whey remains after cooking. This product is not considered a waste, but is used for kneading dough for pancakes, pancakes, biscuits, and also as a filling for okroshka or healthy cocktails.

What can I add?

You can replace kefir in the composition with any fermented milk product. Thus, the use of fermented baked milk gives the cheese a delicate, creamy taste, suitable for making sweet compositions. The more acidic the original raw material, the more snackable the finished cheese becomes. A fatty, pasty mixture made from sour cream or with the addition of it is well suited for fillings with meat and preparing sauces for spicy dishes. Sour cream cheeses also hold their shape perfectly when used as a cream for layering or decorating confectionery products.

Before freezing the product or immediately after expressing, you can add salt or sugar to the taste. You can mix curd cheese with flavoring additives at the moment when the mass has already completely thawed, but has not thickened. Only after this is oppression installed. Another successful way to store and add flavor to a homemade product is to leave the compressed mass in gauze and place it in salted whey. This way the product will not dry out and with each hour of storage it will acquire a cheesy taste instead of a cottage cheese taste.

Along with sugar, you can add dried fruits, any nuts, pieces of fruit or berries to the cheese mass. Spices, aromatic herbs, green onions, dill, parsley, and soy sauce are added to the salted cheese. To use as a sandwich spread, the curd mass is mixed with finely chopped cucumbers, mushrooms, garlic or avocado pulp.

How to serve a dish

Curd mass from any raw material is a concentrated, fatty product. On average, such cheese can contain from 90 to 250 kcal per 100 g. Homemade composition usually does not fall within the scope of dietary products, so its consumption should be limited to people who want to lose weight. For better absorption and burning of fats, it is recommended to eat cottage cheese with breakfast or lunch. In the evening, it is advisable to choose lighter snacks.

Lightly salted or unleavened cheese is served as a separate snack for tea, coffee, and alcoholic drinks. Desserts are prepared with it or simply spread on toast, bread, crackers. A product with sourness, as well as a large amount of salt and seasonings, is served at the main table, used as a sauce, and included in first and second courses.

Snack cheese goes well with meat, seafood, fish (especially smoked), and mushrooms. When replacing regular cottage cheese with this cheese, fluffy cheesecakes and casseroles work better. The product is used instead of mascarpone for vegetable and fish rolls. Homemade sushi can be supplemented with sweet peppers, green onions, and cucumber.

Step-by-step instruction

To prepare 200–250 g of cheese you will need:

1 liter of kefir in a plastic bag or tetra pack;
gauze folded in 4–5 layers.

The cooking process is simple as hell:

Place the kefir in the freezer overnight. It is important that it freezes completely and turns into a brick.
In the morning we release the product from the packaging.
Wrap it in cheesecloth and hang it over a bowl into which the whey will drain.
We wait until the evening (about 12 o'clock).
Carefully transfer the cheese into a plate and taste.

Expert opinion

Mikhailov Ivan Maksimovich

Furniture maker. Work experience 3 years.

The cheese turns out to be the most delicate, very soft. It spreads easily on toast or crackers. There is no acid in it (all the sourness goes into the whey). Most of all, the taste and consistency of the product are reminiscent of mascarpone and Philadelphia.

Do not discard the whey. You can cook pancakes or okroshka on it.

Cheese made from kefir and sour cream

Using this composition as an example, it is convenient to consider the option of preparing curd cheese without freezing. In this case, separation into whey and curd is achieved not by low temperature, but by the addition of acid.

Composition of ingredients

Dairy products for the recipe should be chosen as fatty as possible. The best option for quality cheese is homemade sour cream and kefir. Fat content directly affects the amount of the finished curd product.

Ingredients for cottage cheese at home without freezing:

Product	Features of application	Quantity
Sour cream	At least 25% fat content, with natural ingredients from a trusted manufacturer	From 400 to 500 g
Kefir	Fat content not less than 3.2%	500 ml
Lemon juice	Freshly squeezed or solution of citric acid with water	1 tsp.
Salt	Small, better sea	1 tsp.

The specified amount of salt gives a balanced, delicate taste. For further use in confectionery products, salt can be excluded from the composition. If you want to get a more expressive snack product, double the quantity.

Step-by-step cooking process

Kefir curd cheese in the freezer takes a lot of time to freeze and thaw. Since the dairy products in this recipe are curdled with acid, its preparation is much faster. If you do not need to give the cheese a dense shape, it can be used in just a few hours.

Preparation:

Sour cream and kefir are poured into one bowl and mixed thoroughly.
If you do not intend to use cheese for confectionery, add salt to the mixture.
Then pour lemon juice into the kefir mass. Stir the mixture thoroughly until the salt crystals dissolve and the acid is evenly distributed.
Prepare a structure from a sieve (colander) and deep dishes for receiving the whey. Line the sieve with cotton cloth or multilayer gauze.
The kefir-sour cream mixture is poured into a colander and the whey is allowed to partially drain. The mass should become like a paste.
After this, the edges of the fabric are carefully lifted and placed on the sour cream mixture, and a small weight is lowered on top.
The entire device should be placed in the refrigerator and wait until a viscous cheese structure forms. This usually takes less than a day.

Due to the high fat content of the starting products, the yield of the finished cheese usually exceeds 500 g, and the amount of whey is less than 2 cups. This snack will keep well in the refrigerator for up to 5 days. With minimal modifications, the composition is immediately ready to be served with morning coffee.

What is cream cheese and how is it made?

Cream cheese is a favorite product that is included in many dishes. But you can also eat it simply by spreading it on a piece of bread. It has a mild, moderately pronounced taste, and its consistency differs from other well-known cheeses. Philadelphia, Mascarpone, Boursin are the most famous cream cheeses.

Unfortunately, the cost of the product does not allow you to often pamper yourself with a delicate cheese “cream”, so housewives have come up with a lot of ways to make such cheese with their own hands. Cream cheese is prepared from milk and cream.

But today we present to you a budget homemade recipe for a delicate cheese delicacy, which requires only kefir. You can also use herbs, salt and garlic for taste.

Confectionery cheese from fermented baked milk

A delicate, plastic product with a mild neutral taste is obtained by freezing fermented baked milk. This composition is ideal for preparing classic cream cheese, cheesecake, filling for eclairs, straws, puff pastries, and sochniks.

Composition of ingredients

The entire preparation takes about 50 hours, of which you need to be near the product for no longer than 10 minutes. Using store-bought fermented baked milk with a fat content of 4%, you get curd cream with a calorie content of about 170 kcal per 100 g. Curd cheese from kefir in the freezer is prepared from one ingredient; the version from fermented baked milk also does not require additional products. From 1 liter of store-bought fermented baked milk you should get about 350 g of finished cheese with a soft, creamy consistency. It is more convenient to buy dairy products packaged in 500 ml plastic bags.

Step-by-step cooking process

Packages with fermented baked milk should be frozen first. It is advisable to leave the product in the cold for up to 12 hours.

Further preparation:

Remove the bags from the freezer and dip them in hot water for 2 minutes. This way, when cutting the polyethylene, the contents will easily slip out.
Place frozen ryazhenka briquettes in a colander lined with cloth (gauze). Then the ends of the flap are tied over the contents or secured with a paper clip.
A colander is placed on a pan of suitable diameter so that the handles hold the dishes at a distance from the bottom.
The entire structure is left in a cold place and left for at least 36 hours to drain excess fluid. In the refrigerator, melting occurs slowly, and the whey is better separated from the curd mass. The specified time can be extended by a day to obtain thicker cheese or install a press.
The longer the mass drains, the more dense and uniform the structure becomes. Cheese aged for more than 48 hours under pressure in the refrigerator can be cut with a knife.

Spready curd cheese made from fermented baked milk can be mixed with syrups, fruit purees or melted chocolate and layered into cake layers or filled into pastries. Thick cheese is convenient to use as a snack for coffee, tea, sweet drinks or wine.

HOW TO MAKE SOFT CHEESE FROM FROZEN KEFIR

My husband’s parents live in the village, they have always lived there, they once kept a cow, my mother-in-law made homemade cheese from whole milk, they gave it to us as a gift. That was cheese! Yellow, made with natural eggs and milk. Our family ate it up!

Now the parents are old, they don’t keep a cow, they only give eggs as a gift, thank you for that! But I myself learned to make soft cheese from frozen kefir that tastes no worse than German-made Almette, which consists of a soft creamy curd mass with additives from vegetables or herbs.

The manufacturer claims that Almette curd cheese contains only natural ingredients, but according to experts, it has a number of disadvantages: the consistency does not meet the standards for the production of this fermented milk product.

Almette does not contain phosphates and starch, although it contains them; in fact, the nutritional value is lower than what the manufacturer indicates, plus the high cost of the product (100 rubles per 150 grams).

Cheese recipe

I make the same 150 g from one pack of kefir (450 g) at a price of 32 rubles. And the soft cheese from frozen kefir turns out to be actually natural, since I no longer use any other ingredients, except maybe salt and a little garlic and greenery. To make soft cheese you will need:

kefir 0.5 l;
salt on the tip of a knife;
1 clove of garlic;
dill, cilantro, basil;
pickled cucumber (optional)

We buy kefir with a fat content of at least 2.5%, I tried making it from kefir with a fat content of 0.5%. Yes, it turned out, but the taste is much inferior, the creamy taste is no longer felt. The calorie content of soft cheese is equal to the calorie content of kefir - 53 Kcal per 100 g.

Take a 0.5 liter package. kefir and put it in the freezer. If we want cheese for breakfast, then put it in the freezer in the morning. In the evening after work, we take it out, take the contents out of the bag, put it into a canvas (ordinary rag) bag, or into gauze, folded in several layers.

We hang it on a rope, maybe right above the bathtub or above the basin. At my dacha I simply hang it under a canopy on a hook; by morning the contents of the bag will melt and the liquid (whey) will flow out along with the water.

I take out the curd mass from the bag, which looks and tastes similar to Almette soft cream cheese. It has a light curd consistency and a delicate creamy taste. I transfer it to a bowl, add salt on the tip of a knife, taste it, if there is not enough salt, add more.

I love garlic, I think that if you add a clove of garlic, the cheese takes on a certain piquancy. In short, I add cilantro, dill and basil, and also chop a clove of garlic, mix everything thoroughly, and oh-la-la the cheese is ready! I transfer it to a small container.

You can put the bowl in the refrigerator, or you can immediately spread it on bread. Of course, half a liter of kefir yields only 150 grams, but it’s quite enough for four full-sized sandwiches, and it won’t take much time to prepare.

What could be better for breakfast than a cheese sandwich, perhaps a fried egg or oatmeal. But cheese made on your own will undoubtedly take first place.

Homemade cottage cheese

A more complex recipe for making cheese with eggs and butter yields a very delicate product and a delicious, dense crust to boot. This homemade snack product is very similar to real cheese, so it is usually prepared with salt.

Composition of ingredients

Curd cheese made from kefir in the freezer gives a pasty consistency due to the lack of heat treatment. By heating the curd mass, you can obtain a more viscous structure comparable to processed cheeses.

Ingredients for 10 servings:

cottage cheese (preferably soft) – 0.5 kg;
soda and salt - 1 tsp each. (without top);
eggs (medium size) – 2 pcs.;
butter (melted if possible) – 50 g.

The amount of salt can be halved, but it is advisable to measure the soda exactly according to the recipe. Granular cottage cheese will not give a uniform structure and white lumps may be found in the finished product. Therefore, the mass should first be rubbed through a sieve.

Step-by-step cooking process

Even if the cottage cheese has a soft consistency, it should be thoroughly rubbed with a spoon to ensure the homogeneity of the future mixture. When stirring, you can add salt, soda and knead them together - this makes it easier to achieve a smooth composition.

Further preparation:

Add eggs to the ground curd mixture one at a time, stirring each time until smooth.
Compact the mixture thoroughly with a spoon and leave to proof for at least 2 hours. It is best to leave the mixture at room temperature for 6 hours.
For the next stage of cooking, you need to heat the frying pan and grease it with butter. Cast iron or thick-walled cookware is best suited for this.
Place the curd mixture on a heated frying pan. Continue heating the mixture with constant stirring over moderate heat.
The melted homogeneous mass is poured into a deep bowl. A crispy crust will remain at the bottom of the pan, which when hot can easily be separated from the pan.

After cooling, the mass will turn into a creamy melted product that can be spread on bread or cut into slices, depending on the resulting consistency. The density of the finished cheese depends on the quality of the cottage cheese and the degree of its heating in the pan.

Classic Indian Paneer Cheese Recipe

Curd cheese from kefir in the freezer is the easiest, but not the fastest way to prepare a delicacy at home. By slightly changing the recipe and technology, you can get excellent cheese of classic Indian cuisine in 30 minutes.

Composition of ingredients

This recipe is very popular among vegetarians and supporters of a healthy diet due to its simple composition, versatility, and the ability to be used as part of other dishes or as an independent snack.

Ingredients for Paneer Cheese:

1 liter of milk (it is advisable not to use a shelf-stable product);
150 ml kefir (can be replaced with yogurt or matured whey).

Fermented milk product is needed to curdle milk. This ingredient can be replaced with citric acid or freshly squeezed citrus juice. The entire resulting cheese has an energy value of about 400 kcal. By cutting paneer into portions, you can easily maintain calorie content during strict diets.

Step-by-step cooking process

To prepare paneer at home, you will need to heat the mixture on the stove, so you should choose a thick-bottomed pan or stewing vessel.

Preparation:

Milk is poured into the cooking container and placed on the stove.
Heat the mixture until it boils, and then reduce the heat slightly.
Continuing to stir the milk, pour kefir into it in a thin stream.
After a few minutes, the liquid will fill with flakes and the whey will begin to separate.
Immediately after this, the boiling mixture should be carefully filtered through several layers of gauze.
The resulting mass is the most delicate cottage cheese, which can be used immediately after cooling. To obtain a dense Paneer cheese that can be cut into pieces, continue cooking.
Gauze with cottage cheese is tied into a tight “knot” and placed under a press (a jar or pan of water).

The composition acquires a dense structure within a few hours, after the cheese has completely cooled. The best way to store cooked paneer is to soak it in whey and place it in the refrigerator. Typically, up to 180 g of high-quality compressed cheese is obtained from whole milk. According to classical Italian technology, curd cheese is separated not from whole milk or kefir, but from the whey remaining after the production of other cheeses. The most delicious product will be obtained from mixing several types, with the addition of goat or sheep milk. Using various additives, you can quickly curdle even fresh milk in your home kitchen.

To do this, for one liter of boiled milk you will need:

lemon juice – 2 tbsp. l.;
citric acid (powder) – 1 tsp;
150 ml yogurt or kefir;
1 glass of whey.

Any of these products is capable of separating whey from the curd mass. The main thing is that the dairy products are sufficiently acidic, otherwise the process may not complete. On the contrary, it is important not to overdo it with the amount of citric acid, otherwise the product will be sour.

Curd cheese is prepared at home in different ways, each of which has its own advantages and produces a unique finished product in its own way. From kefir, fermented baked milk, fresh or sour milk, in the freezer and on the stove you get a delicate, universal product for the daily menu or holiday table. At the same time, the home method is practically waste-free. The resulting whey can be used in any dough instead of water, as a base for soups, borscht, drinks, or allowed to mature to the desired acidity and ferment or curd the next portion of milk.