As a rule, pickle cheeses do not conceal special wisdom in the technology of preparation, but the exception is the Georgian classic - suluguni . Unlike their brine cousins, suluguni melts, kneads and only then dips into brine. If all the instructions are followed, the output is soft milky cheese with a layered structure, which can be eaten separately, or use as a main ingredient many Georgian dishes . Today we offer you two suluguni recipes, according to which you can cook cheese yourself.
Recipe for cooking suluguni cheese at home
The main rule of cooking cheese at home is the use of quality products and the mandatory presence of a thermometer. All other details of cheese making, like special knives for cutting bunches, gauze cuts and molds for pressing, remain at your discretion, as they are easily replaced with improvised tools.
Ingredients:
- whole cow milk - 8 liters;
- water 120 ml;
- dry pepsin - 0.1 g.
Preparation
We measure 0,1 g of dry pepsin or on the eye we cover a tenth of a gram sachet with the enzyme. Dissolve pepsin in half a glass of cold water, carefully making sure that there are no lumps left in the solution.
Milk is heated in enamel ware to a temperature of about 35 degrees. Pour into the milk enzyme solution and mix thoroughly. Cover the container and leave the milk protein to curdle for an hour. The end of the enzyme is determined by a variety of factors, including product quality and ambient temperature, and therefore the exact figure in this case can not be named: once the milk is curdled into a gelatinous clot - ready. The next cheese with a long knife or skewer is cut into cubes with a side of the order of 3 cm. We put a container of cheese in a bath with water, the temperature of which reaches 36 degrees, and gradually bring the thermometer to 39, while stirring the cheese cubes every 30 minutes for 2.5 hours. Serum is drained into a separate dish, and the cheese is rammed into a mold and put under the press for 5 hours.
According to the scheme described above, almost any hard cheese is prepared, now we turn to the specificity - the recipe for the home-made suluguni cheese, directly. Return the cheese head to the previously drained serum, heated to 27 degrees. After 5 hours, we cut the suluguni into pieces one and a half centimeters thick and place in the same serum, but already brought to 70 degrees. We leave the cheese to melt before turning into a viscous and elastic clot. We extract the clot from the liquid, draw it out and fold it three times. Repeat the procedure twice more, after which the cheese head is rounded and immersed in brine. The recipe of brine for suluguni is elementary: in a liter of water or whey dissolve a tablespoon of salt and it's ready!
Suluguni from goat's milk - recipe
Georgian cheese makers hardly ever recognize the existence of a recipe for making suluguni based on goat's milk, since only cow's milk is used as the basis for cheese. If you are ready for experiments, then take on the following recipe for Suluguni.
Ingredients:
- goat milk - 2.5 liters;
- cow's milk - 120 ml;
- dry pepsin - 0,5 g.
Preparation
Dissolve the enzyme in half a glass of milk, warm it up to 28-30 degrees to activate. Separately heat goat's milk to 38-40 degrees and mix with the leaven. We leave the container with milk in a warm place for half an hour or an hour, then cut the formed clump, throw it into a colander and put it under the press for the night. Sutra divide the cheese into pieces and heat them in a 70 degree serum. Stretch and stack each of the pieces separately, and then combining them together, form the head of the suluguni and leave it in a brine, made from a mixture of a liter of whey and a tablespoon of salt.