Lets Make Fast Cheese

by nomierinies

6.9K30121

Intro: Lets Make Fast Cheese

Traditional Latvian fast-cheese have many recipes because in every house it's made differently. This is one of so called fast-cheese recipes.

What we need:

  1. 4 liters/kg milk
  2. 2 or more eggs (gives color and better taste; preferably home eggs)
  3. Salt (1 tea spoon - very soft cheese; 3 tea spoons it's possible to taste little bit salt; possible to put salt around cheese at the end.)
  4. Cumin seeds 1 tea spoon (I put about 3-4 teaspoons as I like them, but that is too much)
  5. Garlic for those who like it. (This time I didn't add it, but I like it)
  6. Little bunch of dill. (Gives nicer taste)
  7. Vinegar essence about 2 tea spoons on this amount of milk. (At home I had apple vinegar 6% so I add about 4-6 teaspoons of it.)

STEP 1: Cutting Dill

STEP 2: Preparing Salt and Cumin Seed Mix

STEP 3: Preparing Milk

It's very easy to sear (burn) milk at bottom of bowl while boiling it, so You need to stir it almost all the time on quite small gas. Salt/cumin seed mix and dill add almost at beginning.

STEP 4: When to Add Vinegar?

When milk starts boiling and "growing" (see video) then it's right time to add vinegar while stirring everything. After that almost immediately switch off gas and let milk to become cheese 2-4 minutes. Stir it and You are ready for next step.

(You may download video to see process...)

STEP 5: Draining

Idea is to separate cheese from "milk juice". It's possible to achieve it with cheesecloth or in my case with clean white cotton fabric.

STEP 6: Cheese Almost Ready

After draining you can give form to cheese you like and let it cool. Any way warm cheese is also very tasty. In my case half of it was eaten by family while it's warm. Hardness of cheese depends on how heavy weight you put on it.

Enjoy!

P.S. With this recipe you can get highly creative and develop this cheese on salted type cheese for beer snack or sandwiches adding dried tomatoes, pepper, herbs and other spices or you may develop as sweet cheese adding sugar, raisins, dried fruits, poppy seeds and so on.

Also its possible to play with hardness of cheese - if you put little more vinegar and bigger pressure at the end than you can get harder cheese but if you add butter or olive or other oil than you may get cheese spread.

If you have smokehouse use it - smoked cheese is very tasty.

21 Comments

JamesŠ74 8 years ago

The author of this article has stated that cumin seeds are used in this recipe. It is in fact caraway seeds, used in traditional Latvian cheeses, and it's also in the picture (kimenes is caraway in Latvian) and it does give a unique and special taste and aroma to the cheese

ashleyjlong 9 years ago

Looks really yummy! What size pot would to suggest for this project? I've made cheese with 1 gallon milk before and it just barely fits in our largest pot.

nomierinies 9 years ago

Generally from 4 litres/kilograms of milk you get about 400 grams of cheese. I used 10 litres pot so milk have space to "grow" at the end. You can see "milk growing" in video in 4th step.

sidofan4 9 years ago

Awesome Instructable! I know what I'm making tonight!

You've got my vote!

cwright15 9 years ago

When do you add the eggs?

nomierinies 9 years ago

Actually this time I was so busy with taking photos, that I forgot to add eggs. You can add eggs at beginning so egg spread in all cheese and gives color to all of it. Or second option is to add eggs after adding vinegar and stir everything - then you may get white and yellow/orange pieces in cheese. Second option i like better.
Also for color it's posible to add fresh carrot juice.

boatingman 9 years ago

Thank you. I'm going to give this a try this weekend. It sounds great.

basar.kizildere 9 years ago

Looks very delicious :) I'll definitely try this but I have a question and an assumption:

1. Do you use store bought milk or fresh farm milk?

2. I am assuming this is cow milk?

Thanks.

nomierinies 9 years ago

This time I use fresh farm milk from cow, but it will work with any milk also with goat or sheep milk.

hujan 9 years ago

Hey this looks great!Will definitely try, just a couple of questions:

a) IF the family does not eat it as fast, how long does it usually last, if kept in the fridge?

b) after putting in the vinegar, do you keep stirring it, or let sit for 2-4 minutes, and THEN stir? Thanks ;O)

nomierinies 9 years ago

a) If with herbs and little salt then one week it will surely be good or even longer. If you add more salt than it can become as normal cheese and you can keep it 3 weeks about.

b)first I mix little so vinegar gets in every part of milk. Than after 2-4 mins again. But in reality just experiment.

hujan 9 years ago

Cool thank you for this info, will try and post once I have ;)

triska 9 years ago

Can this be made without egg?
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