Smoked cheese chechil or, as it is popularly called, “pigtail” belongs to traditional Armenian cuisine. In its consistency and taste, it is very similar to smoked cheese, but still Chechil has significant differences from it. The main difference, perhaps, lies in the appearance, because a braided braid definitely cannot be confused with anything else. But besides its attractive appearance, this cheese has many other qualities. Let's take a closer look at the benefits and harms of Chechil cheese for the body.
The benefits of Chechil cheese
Like any dairy product, smoked cheese is a rich source of calcium and phosphorus, which are essential for healthy hair, nails and bones. This cheese also contains B vitamins, which normalize the functioning of the nervous system and improve sleep. In addition, it is worth noting the excellent nutritional properties of Chechil cheese. One hundred grams of cheese accounts for 320 kilocalories. The fat content of Chechil cheese is quite low (5-10%), so it is perfect for people who want to lose weight, but cannot deny themselves their favorite delicacy.
The composition of Chechil cheese is fresh cow, sheep or goat milk, which sours under natural conditions. It also contains rennet, which is used to curdle milk. Since the composition of the cheese is very neutral, it cannot cause any harm to the body. True, people with stomach diseases need to be careful when consuming smoked products, even if they are dairy products. But in general, the main thing is to choose cheese wisely. Never buy Chechil cheese that is too brightly colored, because this means that dyes were used in its preparation. In addition, cheese that was prepared not by natural smoking, but by means of
- cheese made from fibrous balls or braids. "Chechil" means "confused." Due to the fact that the cheese fibers are tied, the nutrients in it are preserved and the cheese does not lose its beneficial properties. Chechil belongs to the group of brine cheeses, that is, the ripening of the cheese occurs in solution. Therefore, it is quite salty and watery.
Unlike suluguni, chechil has more layers and a rich milky taste. In addition to the usual braid, you can find chechil in the form of a straw, a ball, a rope or spaghetti. Smoked Chechil cheese has a spicy taste. It has more salt, less water, and is perfect for...
PRODUCTION
Made from fermented cow's milk. To do this, pepsin, an animal enzyme, is added to milk heated to 32 degrees. After clots appear, the milk is stirred and the temperature is increased to 60 degrees. Next, the whey is separated from the flakes. They are salted and left in the sun. At the same time, in order for the mass to be well salted, it is thoroughly ground in salted water. This method allows you to preserve the maximum amount of vitamins and calcium.
Then the fibers are manually pulled into threads and formed into balls or braids. Full ripening of the cheese occurs within a month in a salt solution. Being a living product, cheese can deteriorate and oxidize. Therefore, it can be stored for no more than 2.5 months.
The thickness of the fibers indicates the high quality of the cheese. If the cheese thread passes into the eye of the needle, it means that the cheese is cooked according to all the rules.
COMPOSITION AND BENEFITS
Cheese contains very little fat, maximum 10%. Therefore, it is considered dietary and suitable for use during a diet. It contains a large amount of water - 60% and from 4 to 8% salt. Cheese is rich in vitamins and calcium. 100 g of chechil contain 280-350 kcal.
USE
The cheese is good fresh and goes very well with natural homemade wines. Fresh white chechil excellent in salads and... Fried cheese is popular: smoked chechil is sliced horizontally and fried in a frying pan. The surface of the cheese becomes golden, and it acquires a special aroma and delicate taste.
Used to prepare appetizers, salads and soups, mixed with cottage cheese or other cheeses.
SALADS WITH CHECHIL CHEESE
A simple salad can be prepared from smoked cheese with ham (200 g each) and tomatoes (2 pcs.). The cheese is cut into about 10 cm long, the ham into strips, and the tomatoes into thin slices. Season with mayonnaise. Overly salty cheese is pre-soaked.
Another salad can be made without tomatoes. In this case, boiled eggs (5 pcs.), canned corn (1 can), a bag of crackers and herbs are added to the cheese and ham. Cheese, eggs, ham and herbs are finely chopped. All ingredients are combined together and seasoned with mayonnaise. The dish can be served on lettuce leaves.
The choice of Chechil cheeses is wide: twisted and braided, smoked and spiced - for every taste. But the best and most useful, undoubtedly, chechil home-cooked - the one that is traditionally prepared in the Caucasus.
The traditional product of our tables is cheese. This product, very valuable in its nutritional and taste qualities, can also be prepared at home. It turns out to be more useful, and there is no need to talk about cost at all. Depending on the type of cheese, preparation will require a minimum set of ingredients that are available in any kitchen. How to make cheese? It all depends on whether it is soft, hard, boiled, melted, smoked, etc. All this can be prepared at home without much difficulty.
Some subtleties
Before making cheese, you need to take into account some of the subtleties of this process. Firstly, only high-quality products are used for cooking. It is better if it is farm cottage cheese or milk. Store-bought products are not suitable for making cheese at home. The fattier the milk or cottage cheese, the more nutritious the final cheese will be. The product turns out tender and oily. To ripen cheese, its weight must be at least 0.5 kilograms. Why is homemade cheese softer?
Secondly, the final result depends on the press. When we make cheese at home, we can't get enough compression. The rich taste is obtained as a result of long aging of hard cheeses. Instead of a special form, you can use a colander. What remains from cheese production is whey, which is used to make dough or okroshka. Homemade product does not last long, a maximum of a week in the refrigerator. It is better to store it in a cotton towel or paper, but not in a plastic bag.
Simple curd cheese
This cheese recipe is the easiest and fastest. To prepare you will need 1.5 liters of milk, a little salt (to taste) and 500 milliliters of kefir. Heat the milk, but do not boil. Then add kefir and salt to it. Stir the resulting mass and heat it again. Then we filter everything through cheesecloth, which must be folded several times. What remains is the cottage cheese, which must be put into a mold and a weight placed on top. The density of the cheese depends on the aging time. After a few hours, when the mass is well compressed, the product will be ready for use. If desired, you can add any herbs or pepper to the cheese.
Mozzarella
Even this cheese can be made with your own hands. Take 2 liters of high-fat milk, two tablespoons of lemon juice, 2 liters of water, two tablespoons of salt and a quarter of a small spoon of pepsin. Pour half a glass of water and dilute pepsin in it. The milk should be heated to about 70 degrees. Then pour lemon juice and pepsin into it. At this point, the whey will immediately begin to separate. We wait for it to completely peel off, but do not bring the mixture to a boil. We drain the whey, but do not throw it away. We heat the water to 90 degrees, but don’t boil it either.
Add salt to it and lower the cheese mixture for three minutes. Then we take it out, put it on the board and begin to knead it with our hands. The mixture will be very hot, so it is better to wear gloves. Then we carry out the lowering procedure again. This results in a soft and chewy cheese. We wrap it in a sausage shape. Store the cheese in brine in a container. The recipe for making cheese is simple and requires very little cost.
Dutch cheese
At home you can make cheese that tastes like Dutch cheese. This recipe is for those who want to know how to make cheese from cottage cheese. For this you will need three liters of milk, two kilograms of cottage cheese, 100 grams of butter, one chicken egg, half a teaspoon of soda and salt to taste. Bring the milk to a boil and place the cottage cheese in it. Stir the mixture and reduce the heat slightly.
Simmer, stirring constantly, until a plastic mass forms and the whey separates. Then place the cheese in a colander, cover with a towel and leave to drain the liquid. Separately, melt the butter and put the cheese mixture, salt, soda and egg into it. Mix everything thoroughly without turning off the heat. The mixture should reach the consistency of cream and turn yellow. Turn off the heat and transfer the cheese into the mold. We put a load on top and put it in the refrigerator.
Processed cheese
How to make cheese so that it tastes like a processed product? You can prepare it at home quickly and without problems. The cheese recipe includes the following ingredients: one kilogram of cottage cheese, 100 grams of butter, one egg, one teaspoon each of salt and soda, two cloves of garlic and any herbs to taste. Cottage cheese should contain a minimum amount of water. To do this, you need to place it under a press and leave it overnight. The more butter there is in the cheese, the softer it will be.
It is better to mince store-bought cottage cheese, but homemade cottage cheese can be used immediately. First, beat the cheese a little and chop the herbs as finely as possible. Place the cottage cheese in a saucepan or any pan with a thick bottom and add oil, salt and soda to it. Cook the mass until it has a homogeneous and plastic consistency. Don't forget to stir constantly so that the cheese doesn't burn. After 10 minutes, remove the mixture from the heat and add garlic, herbs and egg. Mix and transfer it into the mold. Place the cheese in the refrigerator to harden. Here's how to make cheese at home.
Adyghe cheese
This product has an excellent taste and is used in many dishes. Let's consider one of several preparation options. Take four liters of milk (only natural and fresh), 500 milliliters of Activia yogurt (room temperature) and salt as desired. Place the pan on the fire and pour the milk into it. We heat it strongly, but do not boil. Now we begin to slowly pour in the yogurt. In this case, the mass must be constantly stirred. Gradually flakes will form and the whey will separate. When the whey becomes transparent, you must immediately remove the container from the heat, otherwise the cheese will turn out too dense.
Cover the colander with gauze and place the cheese mixture into it. The whey should drain as much as possible. We form the cheese into the desired shape from the mass and store it in a small amount of liquid. How to make cheese from milk? This is one of the simplest recipes. This product is eaten in its natural form. You can also cut it into pieces, roll in spices and fry on each side. You will get baked cheese. The recipe can be supplemented at your discretion.
Boiled cheese
This unusual dish came to us from Latvia. Boiled cheese is a delicious snack and an excellent addition to main courses. To prepare you will need 250 grams of cottage cheese, 20 grams of butter, 60 grams of sour cream, one egg, caraway seeds and salt to taste. Place the cottage cheese in a bowl and cover with a lid. So it should stand for about 3-4 days. During this time, mold will appear on the cottage cheese, which will give it an extraordinary taste. Now you need to pass it through a meat grinder and add sour cream, salt and caraway seeds to it.
Melt the butter in a saucepan and put the curd mass into it. Mix everything well and gradually heat it up. Then add one egg and mix everything again. We continue to heat the cheese, stirring constantly. You should get a homogeneous mass. Grease the mold with butter and place the cheese in it. We put it in the refrigerator overnight and then eat it.
Homemade cheese
To make this cheese you only need two ingredients. These are milk (3 liters) and pepsin (1 gram). Brynza is considered a product of Caucasian cuisine. However, this type of cheese has firmly entered our diet. It is prepared from sheep or goat milk, but cow's milk can also be used. The main thing is that it is of good quality, fresh and fatty. It is better not to take a store-bought product. Place the container of milk on the fire and heat it. Then add pepsin. It can be purchased at a pharmacy. Pepsin is a white powder. Set the pan aside for 30 minutes or an hour. The milk should acquire the consistency of an acidic product. Then return the pan to the heat and heat well, but do not boil. As a result, a mass will separate, which must be collected and salted. We form the cheese using a mold, cool and eat.
Ossetian cheese
How to cook the famous recipe is simple. To do this, you need to take four liters of good milk, 500 grams of kefir with a fat content of 2.5 percent and 10 “Acidin-pepsin” tablets, which are sold at the pharmacy. Pour the milk into the pan and heat it a little (30 degrees). Then pour in kefir, which should be at room temperature. Mix everything and leave for 10 minutes. Dissolve the tablets in 100 milliliters of water and pour them into a saucepan. Stir the mixture and leave for an hour to form a starter.
It will be ready when a greenish liquid (whey) separates when you press the mixture with a spoon. Without stirring, cut the contents of the pan into squares with a wooden spatula. Leave the cheese for another 20 minutes. Then we take out the mass and put it into a mold with holes to drain the liquid. Cover the cheese mass with a plate and place the weight. In a day the cheese will be ready. How to make cheese so that it turns out salty? You can simply add salt or seasonings during the cooking process.
Chechil cheese - braid
Many people think that cooking is almost impossible. However, it is not. Chechil is an Armenian cheese that is prepared only by hand at home. It is based on cow's milk, which can be mixed with goat or sheep milk. Then it should turn sour. To speed up this process, you can add a little sour milk or whey. Then the milk is heated and pepsin is added at a temperature of 40 degrees (1 gram per 300 milliliters). Next, the mass is heated to 50 degrees, at which point pieces of cottage cheese begin to form. The flakes are gradually crushed, and a cheese ribbon is obtained. It is taken out and laid in length. Then this mass is cut into thin threads and braids are woven from them. After this, they are placed in a very salty solution (20 percent). Finished braids can be slightly smoked. The technology for producing cheese at home differs from the factory one, but such a product will be much tastier. Here's how to make a pigtail - a popular cheese and loved by many.
Afterword
Buying cheese in a store is not difficult, but if you make it yourself, you will get a more nutritious product. Use only the best products for this, fresh and fatty. Homemade cheese should be very soft and tasty. Additional ingredients will help transform the taste of the product and make it richer and more aromatic. It doesn't require many ingredients to prepare. Everything you need can be easily purchased at the market from farmers and in stores. The main thing is that the cooking technology is followed. This guarantees the quality and great taste of homemade cheese.
To taste a wonderful salty snack, you don’t have to run to the supermarket and buy incredible delicacies. Today we will talk about how to make Chechil cheese at home, the recipe for which you will find in our article along with detailed instructions. It turns out incredibly tasty, juicy and, most importantly, without the slightest suspicion of the presence of GMOs or other unhealthy components in the composition.
Chechil cheese is known to us under another name - “Pigtail” cheese. We can find it on the counter of any store. It is considered the closest “relative” of suluguni; it is similar in taste and consistency, but its taste and density are still different.
There is no need to age Chechil cheese for weeks; it is prepared quickly both in industrial conditions and at home.
Well, let's try to do it?
Ingredients
- — 3 l + -
- Pepsin – 10 g + -
For the brine
- - taste + -
- - taste + -
Cooking at home
The recipe calls for the use of rennet or pepsin. You can buy such “exotic” in almost any pharmacy.
Add pepsin at the rate of 1 g per 300 ml of liquid.
If we have village milk in front of us, it must be “skimmed” or skimmed, since in the original technology Chechil cheese is made from milk with a low percentage of fat.
- To do this, put raw milk in a saucepan or jar in the refrigerator overnight, and in the morning remove the top layer, that is, the cream, with a ladle. We remember that this will reduce the volume of milk, so in advance we pour it into a pan larger than 3 liters by about 20-25%.
- Then we leave the milk in the open air and let it sour naturally during the day - this way the cheese will turn out more tasty and will stretch better.
It is the acidity of the milk in this recipe that determines how well the cheese pieces can be turned into threads. The optimal moment is when it begins to curl.
- We install a divider on the gas stove so that the milk in the pan heats up gradually and evenly, and heat it to 32 - 35 ° C, remove from the heat.
- Pour in pepsin in proportion and leave for half an hour. There is no need to touch or interfere with anything - just let it sit.
- Over time, a dense mass forms in the pan; put it back on the stove and heat it to 50°C, stirring gently. This will help the serum separate completely.
- Then we filter the resulting flakes through cheesecloth and place them on the table. We put on gloves and pull the flakes into threads. They can be twisted into balls or braided, as we are used to seeing.
- We make a saline solution and put the resulting chechil cheese in it overnight. In the morning the product is ready for use. You can eat it straight or put it in the smoker to acquire a bright color and spicy aroma.
But there is a faster way to prepare a delicious snack at home.
How to make chechil from fresh milk
For this recipe we need 4 liters of fresh low-fat milk.
How to make Chechil cheese
- Warm the milk to a temperature no higher than 38°C and add 1 g of rennet. Mix everything thoroughly and immediately remove from heat.
- Leave it to curl and thicken for 35-40 minutes, and then cut the resulting mass into squares directly in the pan - this will ensure better separation of the whey. Leave again for half an hour.
- In the meantime, prepare a colander, a large sieve or sieve - cover it with several layers of gauze. We discard the resulting cheese and let it drain for an hour.
- We heat water over the fire so that the hand can tolerate it, put pieces of cheese into it and pull them into threads. Thanks to the temperature, they will become more plastic and will not tear.
- We twist the finished chechil in any convenient way and place it in a pre-prepared saline solution.
Now you know how to make Chechil cheese at home. Cooking recipes vary, so we try different ones to choose the right one, because making cheese is not just a labor-intensive, but also a very delicate process. Who knows which method will work in your hands and in your kitchen?
Share the details of making Chechil cheese in the comments and post photos of the finished product, friends!
Chechil is a Caucasian pickled cheese with an interesting history and a lot of useful properties.
Tight fibrous braids, woven from an elastic cheese mass, rightfully coexist on the shelves of gastronomic departments next to other cheeses. Chechil is a pickled cheese, the brother of Suluguni, but it has its own hardened character and individual delicate taste. The history of this product is interesting: it is produced in the Caucasus only by hand, pulling the threads to the thickness of a hair. Chechil goes harmoniously with beer or wine, decorates a salad or sandwich, and adds a piquant appearance to a rich cheese plate.
What is Chechil
The Armenian national cheese, which consists of fibrous balls or braided braids, is chechil. Due to the fact that the cheese is simply tied into a bundle, all the nutritional juices and natural properties of dairy raw materials are retained in the product. Chechil refers to pickled cheeses, those that ripen in a salty solution, therefore they have a watery structure and a high salt content. The name of the cheese comes from a Caucasian word that sounds the same - chechil, which means confused.
Chechil differs from suluguni, a close relative, by increased layering and a more pronounced fermented milk taste. There are many varieties of chechil: in addition to the traditional braid, it is produced in the form of spaghetti, ropes, straws, noodles, and balls. Quite often, this type of brine cheese is smoked, which adds piquancy to the finished product. This modern transformation of fibrous cheese appealed to beer lovers: the product is dry and salty, indispensable as an addition to a foamy drink.
How it is produced
Chechil is produced from fresh pasteurized cow's milk with reduced fat content, which is fermented using animal rennet. First, the milk is heated to 32 degrees, then pepsin is added. After a clot has formed, the fermented milk mixture is stirred and heated to 60 degrees. The resulting flakes are collected, separated from the whey, heavily salted and placed in the sun. Then they are stretched by hand on the table in the form of threads, wound into balls of five kilograms, or immediately braided into braids. The cheese is stored in a salty solution until fully ripened for almost a month. The maximum shelf life of cheese on sale is no more than seventy-five days. This is a living product, without preservatives, therefore it is subject to oxidation and rapid spoilage.
The copyright for the production of braids from chechil belongs to Karan Abrahamyan, head of the cheese workshop at the educational and research center of the Kyiv Agrarian University, Fastovsky district (Velikaya Skitynka village). The author has a patent for an invention and an industrial design, a certificate for a mark for goods and services. Initially, the braid was made from Italian Mozzarella cheese; much later, the braid began to be made from suluguni, and only then from chechil.
The benefits of Chechil cheese
The elastic, dense consistency of the cheese has a low fat content - up to 10%, which is why Chechil is classified as a dietary product. Due to its low fat content, this type of pickled cheese is used in diets. For example, Protasov’s diet is based on the consumption of raw vegetables and low-fat dairy products. At the same time, chechil has a fairly high moisture content - up to 60% and salt - 4-8%. Rich in calcium and vitamins, chechil is a truly healthy product. The energy value of one hundred grams of cheese ranges from 280 to 350 kcal.
If chechil prepared correctly, observing all the secrets of technology, its fibers can be pulled through the eye of a needle. This is how cheese is checked for quality. The capricious nature of the product is due to a special technology: if the raw materials are of poor quality, or if a non-professional hand touches the cheese production, Chechil simply will not work.
A variety of snacks are prepared from cheese and added to soups and salads. In the Caucasus, chechil is eaten fresh and white, washed down with homemade wine. The most common recipe is fried chechil. To do this, smoked fibers are cut horizontally and placed in a heated frying pan. As soon as an appetizing golden crust appears, the cheese is turned over and fried on the other side. This savory appetizer gives chechil a special tenderness and aroma.
