It happens that cottage cheese was in the fridge - it didn’t go right away, they changed their minds about preparing dessert or something else, and the next day I wanted cream cheese for sandwiches or pizza.
Do not rush for a new purchase.
The frugal hostess does not throw anything away; all her products must be used and processed.
Make cream cheese from cottage cheese.
At home, this is easy enough to do.
In addition, it is possible to diversify the taste with the help of various additives, and at the same time find a worthy application for the curd, bought yesterday, without waiting until it finally deteriorates.
Cream cheese at home - basic technological principles
Each industrial technology, with its home use, varies depending on the existing conditions. This is similar to the principle of operation of technical conditions, when any producer can deviate from existing state standards and develop their own technology, for example, preparing cream cheese from cottage cheese at home. But the general technological principles for creating a product, in terms of appearance and taste, identical to processed cheese, certainly exist, and they must be adhered to in order to get processed cheese, and not something else.
What are these general principles for preparing a product, and in which cases you can deviate from the standards, and what will remain unchanged in technology?
Cream cheese at dairy plants is obtained from cheese grain (cottage cheese). The stages of milk processing preceding the production of cottage cheese (cleaning, pasteurization, ripening, etc.) are left without attention, because we are interested in the original product - cottage cheese.
It should be emphasized here that in the production for processed cheeses cottage cheese of any fat content, feta cheese, cheese mass, whole and powdered milk or cream, sour cream, hard cheeses (previously refined and crushed) can be used - any dairy products are used. They are crushed into crumbs to obtain cheese dough.
Let us return for a moment to the question of making cream cheese from cottage cheese at home. If at the time of selecting raw materials for melting cheese in the refrigerator, one of the products listed above was deposited, then you can safely grind something together with cottage cheese into crumbs, make your own composition from the available raw materials. But if you add to the cheese mass, for example, a piece of littered blue cheese, then you need to understand that this will affect the taste and texture of the future processed cheese. That is, the selection of raw materials should be a deliberate action, at least with a supposedly planned result.
We consider the production process further. After the selection of raw materials, its processing begins: cleaning the cortical layer, grinding and preparing the mixture from crumbs. The cleaning and removal of paraffin is done in cases when hard cheese is added to the cheese grain. Then all the components are individually grinded into the smallest fractions and then a composition for cheese dough is made from them.
Pay attention to the sequence and choose which of the described production steps can be useful in making cream cheese from cottage cheese at home. The process of grinding hard cheeses, if necessary, will not take much time and will not require special equipment. It may be enough to use a fine grater. At this stage, a blender or a meat grinder will also help.
When preparing a cheese mixture for melting, attention should be paid not only to the introduction of additives (paprika, bacon, greens, etc.) to create the necessary taste, but also to the regulation of acidity, which determines the mode of cheese melting and its maturation. If hard cheeses are present in the mixture, then the temperature and duration of melting are reduced. To reduce the acidity of the raw materials add fresh, not sour cottage cheese. For cream cheese from cottage cheese at home, you can reduce the acidity and create the necessary consistency by adding fresh or dried milk, cream.
To obtain processed cheese from cottage cheese at home, it is necessary to add salt-melters.
What is it and what is it for? During the melting process, milk protein passes into a soluble state. In the raw curd mass, casein (milk protein) was not subjected to prolonged and high temperature processing, and, therefore, the melting ability of the curd is very low, which, in turn, during the melting process will make it difficult to obtain a homogeneous mass without grains of cheese grain. To improve the melting of cottage cheese, the addition of salts of citric sodium, sodium pyrophosphate, dibasic sodium phosphate is used. The best salt-melter in cheese production is considered to be lemon sodium.
The following quite reasonable question arises: where to get such salt for making cream cheese from cottage cheese at home? It is a nutritional supplement for a wide range of uses. It is used as an anticoagulant in the food industry and medicine, for the production of processed cheeses, infant formula, jelly, yogurts, candy, seasonings, carbonated drinks with lemon or lime flavors. Based on sodium citrate, drugs are made to relieve hangover, heartburn, as a laxative, and to treat cystitis and diseases of the genitourinary system. Acid salt can be purchased at specialized points of sale: in the end, it can be useful not only for preparing cream cheese from cottage cheese at home.
Well, if there is no desire or opportunity to purchase a food supplement, then there are other means that partially replace its use in home cheese making.
When a significant amount (at least 30%) of cheese crumbs is added from hard cheese, it is possible to achieve the required consistency without the use of sodium citrate. In this case, the cottage cheese should have a moist, soft consistency.
Soda and citric acid will help to partially slow down coagulation during melting of cheese, despite the fact that the chemical formula of these compounds is different and has only some similar elements.
When adding acid salt, you need to be guided by taste, as well as when introducing citric acid and table salt into the cheese mass.
After making acid salt, you need to give the mass time for ripening, from one hour to 3 hours, depending on the composition of the raw material.
The next cooking step is the melting of the cheese mass. The melting time is from 15 to 30 minutes, which is due to the volume of the cheese mass, as well as the quality of the feedstock: if you want to keep the taste, the melting time is reduced; to eliminate defects in cheese dough, the duration of the heat treatment, on the contrary, is increased. The finished mass at a temperature of 80-85 ° C is transferred into molds and cooled.
Recipe 1. "Home Amber"
The composition of the product:
Cottage cheese (36%) 750 g
Yolks, raw 3 pcs.
Oil 150 g
Sodium Citrate 10 g
Cooking method:
Grind the cottage cheese with egg yolks, add acid salt, mix and leave for 1.5 hours to ripen the mass.
Boil water in a large saucepan and lower a bowl of cheese into it. Cook the cheese dough to thicken with continuous stirring. When the mass begins to lag behind the walls of the bowl, add the melted butter, mix until smooth.
Continue to beat, removing from the stove, so that the fat stops to separate. When it cools down to 80 ° C, beat and pack in cups or molds.
Remove the fully-cooled processed cheese in the refrigerator, in a sealed form. To seal the cups, cut the foil lids to the diameter of the mold and glue them to the edges with egg white.
Recipe 2. Cream cheese with mushrooms
The composition of the product:
Curd 1.0 kg
Homemade sour cream 400 g
Mushroom seasoning 25 g
Fresh champignons 600 g
Vegetable oil 100 ml
Order of preparation:
Small mushrooms with "closed" hats soak in acidified water for about half an hour, rinse, peel and cut into slices. Fry in vegetable oil and refrigerate.
Chop the cottage cheese and sour cream into a creamy mass, add the mushroom seasoning. Soak the cheese dough for a couple of hours and cook on a steam bath before the mass begins to thicken. Sprinkle the fried mushrooms, mix thoroughly again and remove from the stove. Do not stop stirring processed cheese to form a head. The mass should be easily separated from the scapula and the walls of the dishes.
Transfer the cooled mushroom cheese to a wooden cutting board and beat. The finished cheese head will be easily separated from the hands and from the board. Put the cheese in a mold and leave it to cool on the table, and then in the refrigerator.
Recipe 3. Spicy Cream Cheese
Product Composition:
Hard cheese (in assortment) 400 g
Fat cottage cheese 750 g
4 eggs
Sour cream, homemade 250 g
Garlic 50 g
Ground pepper, black and red
Dried paprika, sweet 100 g
Soda 20 g
Citric acid 5 g
A mixture of caraway seeds and coriander 50 g
Order of preparation:
Dip the cottage cheese and hard cheese in the bowl of the combine and beat in a lush mass, adding eggs, sour cream, spices. Cook the prepared cheese dough for about half an hour, putting the bowl with it in a large pan with water. Cook, stirring occasionally. As soon as the ball begins to form, remove from heat and place a bowl of cheese in a bowl of ice water, continuing stirring. Then grease the working surface and hands, form a bar, sprinkle it with caraway seeds and coriander, wrap in a film. Soak the finished cheese for 3-4 hours in the room, and then put it in the cold.
Recipe 4. Cream cheese "Emerald", with nuts
The composition of the product:
Cottage cheese (19%) 400 g
Cream, dry (20%) 100 g
Lemon juice 60 ml
Milk, whole 0.9 l
Salt
Basil, lemon 150 g
Hard cheese, grated 0.5 kg
Dried garlic 50 g
Roasted Peanuts, Ground 200 g
Cooking:
Rub the cottage cheese through a sieve. Dissolve cream in warm milk (40 ° C), add ground dried garlic. Chop the basil finely, remember it with a little salt and add the greens to the milk mixture. Combine the grated curd with small crumbs of hard cheese, mix and put in the prepared milk. Put the mass to cook in a water bath. Warming up to 60 ° C, pour in the lemon juice, while rotating the spatula in a circle until the fibers formed are gathered in a dense clot. Take a bowl of green cheese from hot water, place it in another bowl of ice water. Rotate more to allow the mass to cool. Put the cheese in a silicone mold, greased and sprinkled with ground peanuts.
Recipe 5. Chocolate, processed cheese
The composition of the product:
Curd, vanilla 0.5 kg
Sugar - to taste
Baking soda 5 g
Dark chocolate 200 g
Cream, oily 250 ml
Lemon juice 30 ml
Cooking Technology:
Warm the cream and melt the chocolate and sugar in them. Beat the curd mass with milk-chocolate mixture, add lemon juice with soda. Cook for 5-7 minutes on low heat, continuously stirring the mass. Cool the cheese to 70-80 ° C and place in cups.
Recipe 6. Cream cheese, cream - classic taste
Ingredients Composition:
Milk, whole 120 ml
Homemade cottage cheese, fatty 500 g
Oil 60 g
Salt to taste
Soda 10 g
Cooking method:
Dissolve salt in warm milk, add soda, oil. Rub the cottage cheese, topping up the milk mixture. Cook the mass until the cottage cheese is melted. Lightly cool the cheese and pack into prepared forms. After it has completely cooled, put it in the refrigerator.
Cream cheese from cottage cheese at home - useful tips and tricks
The preparedness of the processed cheese in hot form corresponds to a soft, stretching and plastic consistency. After cooling, the processed cheese becomes elastic, but not hard. He should not crumble.
Grains of cottage cheese should not be present in the finished processed cheese, and so that this does not happen, monitor the humidity of the cooked cheese dough, wipe it through a sieve. To increase the plasticity and softness of the prepared cheese mass, you can enter milk, if the dough has sufficient acidity, or whey, sour cream - if you need to increase the pH level.
Cream cheese from cottage cheese at home is best cooked in a steam bath to avoid burning. Prepare the necessary dishes and get ready for the fact that during the cooking process, the cheese dough must be continuously and intensively mixed.
The required fat content of processed cheese is regulated by the addition of cream or butter. Sometimes a vegetable oil is added to the cheese dough according to the recipe, which provides greater plasticity and softness than creamy fats. When vegetable oils are added, the soft consistency of processed cheese is maintained even with significant cooling.
