Let’s prepare a dish of Adyghe cuisine – Homemade Adyghe Cheese. Adyghe cheese has a pleasant sour-milk taste and belongs to the category of lightly salted cheeses. Such cheese contains a huge amount of calcium. You can make such cheese at home. Some people use lemon juice (citric acid), but there is another way to make cheese – using an enzyme.
Ingredients:
- Milk – 3 L
- Dry starter (enzyme) – 1 pack
- Table salt – 1 tsp
- Water – 10 ml
Preparation:
- Quick-ripening cheese and for its preparation, just one packet of enzyme is enough, without fermentation. To do this, you need to dissolve the packet of enzyme in cold but boiled water. 10 ml of water is enough.
- The main component for making cheese is also milk. It is advisable to use homemade milk, as such milk is rich in lactic acid bacteria and other microorganisms, while store-bought milk is much inferior in this regard. You need to heat the milk to 32 degrees. Study the instructions that come with the enzyme for making Adyghe cheese, as depending on the weight of the enzyme, a certain amount of milk is required. Pour the dissolved enzyme into the heated milk and stir the milk for another 2 minutes. Cover with a lid and leave the milk undisturbed for one hour.
- After an hour, the milk will take on a jelly-like form. This jelly needs to be cut into 3 cm cubes.
- By cutting the jelly, you can see how actively the whey began to separate from the clots. In a separate saucepan (kettle), heat the water. Now you need to build a water bath for the saucepan with curdled milk. You can use the kitchen sink. Pour hot water into the sink and place our saucepan there. Now it is important that the temperature inside the saucepan is 38-39 degrees. For two hours, you need to maintain this temperature, periodically adding hot water to the sink. The lid should be closed at the same time.
- After two hours, you can see clear edges of the clots and a lot of whey separated.
- Using a slotted spoon, remove the milk clots into a deep bowl. Start breaking it into curd grains 7-8 mm in size. Drain off excess whey.
- Then salt to taste. The taste and volume of the resulting curd grains may vary, but you need to focus on the fact that for a head weighing 500-550 g, you need 1 tsp of salt (non-iodized). Mix the curd grains and salt.
- Then press the cheese. Transfer the curd grains to cheesecloth, tie the top. Place a press on it for one hour, then turn the pressed cheese over and place it under the press again for another hour. If the whey is still draining, the pressing time can be increased.
Homemade Adyghe cheese is ready. Enjoy!
Ready-made cheese is best stored in cheesecloth, previously moistened with whey. From 3 liters of homemade milk, you can get 500-600 g of ready-made cheese. Such cheese is perfect for sandwiches and vegetable salads.