How to check the quality of cottage cheese at home

How to check the quality of cottage cheese? This issue is quite relevant in our age of high technology. After all, what manufacturers just do not add to the fermented milk product in order to reduce the cost of it or increase the mass as a whole. Let's sort it out in order.

In the shop

Price. Any sane person understands that high-quality cottage cheese cannot be cheap. Therefore, first of all, focus on the cost of the product. It becomes clear that cottage cheese with a price per kilogram, as for a loaf of bread, should cause certain suspicions.

Shelf life. Proper cottage cheese does not have great vitality. After 72 hours, he begins to gradually sour. And at room temperature even earlier - after 8 hours. Therefore, always carefully read the information on the packaging! If an expiration date of more than 3 days is indicated, then refuse to purchase such a product.

Packaging. A priori, it should be airtight if you are going to buy cottage cheese from the manufacturer. Inspect her carefully. You should be alert if:

• The integrity of the package is broken.
• Fluid streaks or cloudy droplets are visible inside.
• The mass inside does not keep its shape, spreads.

All these signs 100% guarantee that the manufacturer cheats with the product.

Composition. Once again about the information on the package. The composition of high-quality cottage cheese can include only:

• natural milk
• butter
• cream
• leaven

Everything else is from the evil one. Read and read again! Especially what is written in very small letters or deliberately sealed in the side seam.

On the market

Here you have more chances to choose high-quality cottage cheese. Indeed, many sellers allow the product to smell and even try. But there are a few more tricks by which you can determine the quality of the product without even touching it.

Tara. Do not rush to go to the counter. Observe from which containers the seller imposes cottage cheese. Usually owners bring homemade natural product in basins, cans, banks, saucepans. But on the counter may be an aluminum bowl, but under the counter - a company box from an unknown manufacturer. If you liked the product, then carefully watch that the seller weighs it for you from the same container from where you tried it.

Buyers Pay attention to the queue, if there is one. Usually popular rumor runs fast, and everyone in the district knows about high-quality cottage cheese. Therefore, the queue appears, sometimes even ahead of time, before the arrival of the seller. But if a rotten product is sold, then people are in no hurry to buy. For fun, get in line, chat with customers. Ask if they took cottage cheese here before, what does it taste like, what do they think? Usually people are very willing to share their impressions.

Where did the firewood come from? Feel free to ask the seller. People who honestly sell high-quality cottage cheese respond immediately, without hesitation and looking directly into their eyes. But merchants fake a product crumple, look away, give slurred answers. Here is a list of tricky questions:

• Do you have a lot of cows?
• Where do you graze them so much?
• And what, with one cow so much milk that remains on the curd?
• And what are the nicknames of your cows?
• And how far do you live?
• How do you get there?
• And why do not your local cottage cheese sell up if it is so beautiful?
• And why only sell cottage cheese? Where is the milk or butter?

Well and the like. Usually 5 questions are enough to bring the seller to clean water.

Taste and smell. In the store you will not have the opportunity to open the package to evaluate the quality of the product according to your feelings. But on the market, most sellers do not refuse tasting. Therefore, do not be afraid to ask. Take a sniff first.High-quality cottage cheese should smell pleasantly characteristic, slightly giving off sourness. There should not be any other admixtures of aromas.

Evaluate visually the consistency of the goods. Good homemade cottage cheese should be crumbly, a little yellowish. The pure white color indicates industrial production. Dense large lumps should also cause suspicion.

Taste cottage cheese should be cottage cheese! There should be no oily film or chemical smell in the mouth. Listen to yourself, and you will understand what it is about. By the way, a product containing vegetable fats leaves a sugary-sweet hue in the mouth, without any sour taste.

Price. Natural homemade cottage cheese is expensive. By some standards, it’s even very expensive. A cheap product is probably involved in incomprehensible rubbish or made in violation of technology and sanitary standards.

At home

So, you still made your choice, and bought a certain amount of cottage cheese. How to check its quality at home without harm to health? There are several ways.

Iodine. The most common cottage cheese additive in manufacturers is starch. It is inexpensive, but it significantly increases the total mass of the product. But it’s very difficult to determine its taste right away. Therefore, folk wisdom came up with a cheap, but very effective way. You will need only the most ordinary pharmacy iodine.

It is necessary to take a piece of cottage cheese and drip a solution on it. The appeared blue color clearly indicates the presence of starch. If the cottage cheese is colored with iodine in a characteristic brown hue, then you can be calm, you bought a quality product.

Air. Another simple way that gives a fairly reliable result. It is only necessary to leave a small amount of product in the open air at room temperature. Depending on the result, you can already judge the quality:

1. Cottage cheese noticeably changed color to yellow, covered with a dense crust. But at the same time, the taste and smell did not change. Forced to upset you. You bought a curd product with unknown additives.
2. Cottage cheese practically did not change color, did not wind. There was a strong smell of souring or even fermentation. On the palate, strongly acidic notes became noticeable. Congratulations! You have a natural, high-quality product on your table.

Heat treatment. But our people are not content with just checking iodine. People have long been aware that manufacturers add various oils (palm or coconut) to the curd. On the taste, color and smell, their presence cannot be determined. Therefore, another check was invented, which is very easy to do at home.

You will need only a bowl, boiling water and a slice of mass. Cottage cheese is placed in a container, poured with boiling water and gently stirred. A high-quality product under the influence of temperature should curl up in a tight, tight lump. Bad cottage cheese containing vegetable oils should practically dissolve, leaving only small soft clots.

Similar can be called another method of verification. The cottage cheese is simply heated in a dry clean frying pan. A mass with vegetable fats will melt, and a good product will coagulate, releasing a little serum.

Some more tips

Some sources claim that too quick spoilage of cottage cheese is a sign of unsanitary conditions in its production. This is especially true for a home product. They say that the milkmaid didn’t wash her hands, and the cow’s udder is dirty, and the dishes smoked for years. We dare to object that this is not so. The fact is that the villagers are more than anyone else concerned about the quality of their products. Otherwise, who will buy milk from them and their ilk?

Now again. A sign recently appeared on the market: “Unique pink cottage cheese!” From super duper cows ”and something else there. And even there was a small queue. The price by the way did not differ much from the usual product. And after all, no one was embarrassed by the sour amber from the counter a mile away.Never try to buy pink cottage cheese, unless it is a dye in the curd mass. A natural homemade product turns pink only in one case: it has long been rested as an eternal dream. Having tasted such goodies, you can very quickly go after him to another world. Pink color is an indicator of the extreme degree of damage to cottage cheese!

About bitterness. Some cunning market traders justify the bitterness in the curd with phrases about wormwood in the pasture, some other tales. Do not believe it. Cows do not eat wormwood. From the word at all. Therefore, if you were offered to taste the goods, and you felt bitterness, then do not buy. This is the first sign of the old cottage cheese, which has already begun to deteriorate.

Now you know how to check the quality of cottage cheese. And it will be difficult for you to mislead any wise seller or manufacturer of low-quality goods.

Video: how to buy real cottage cheese, not fake