How to check the quality of cottage cheese at home

How to check the quality of cottage cheese? This question 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 make it cheaper or to increase the mass as a whole. Let's understand in order.

In the shop

Price. Any sensible person understands that high-quality cottage cheese can not be cheap. Therefore, first of all, focus on the cost of the product. Here it becomes clear that cottage cheese with the price per kilogram, as for a loaf of bread, should arouse certain suspicions.

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

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

• The integrity of the packaging has been compromised.
• Visible drips or cloudy drops are visible inside.
• The mass inside does not hold the form, spreads.

All these signs are 100% guaranteed that the manufacturer is cheating with the product.

Composition. Once again about the information on the packaging. The composition of high-quality cottage cheese may 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 soldered to the side seam.

On the market

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

Tara. Do not rush to approach the counter. Watch from the side, from which containers the seller imposes cottage cheese. Usually, homemade natural homemade products are brought in basins, cans, jars, saucepans.But there can be an aluminum bowl on the counter, but under the counter there is a branded box from an unknown manufacturer. If you like the product, then carefully look to the seller to weigh it from the same container where you tried.

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 you sell a rotten product, then people are in no hurry to buy. For the sake of interest, stand in a queue, chat with customers. Ask if they used to take cottage cheese here before, what does it taste like, what do they think? Usually people are very happy to share their impressions.

Where is the firewood from? Feel free to try the seller. People who honestly sell high-quality cottage cheese, respond immediately, without hesitation and looking straight into their eyes. But traffickers fake product crumple, averting their eyes, give muffled answers. Here is a list of tricky questions:

• Do you have a lot of cows?
• Where do you feed them so much?
• And what, from one cow so much milk, what on cottage cheese remains?
• What nicknames do your cows have?
• And how far do you live?
• How do you get there?
• And why don't your local cottage cheese buy, if it is so beautiful?
• And why only sell cheese? Where is the milk or butter?

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

Taste and smell. In the store you will not be able to open the packaging in order to assess the quality of the product according to your feelings. But in the market, most sellers do not refuse tasting. So do not be afraid to ask. Smell first. High-quality cottage cheese should smell nicely, slightly sour. No other impurities of aromas should be.

Visually evaluate the consistency of the product. A good cottage cheese should be crumbly, a little yellowish. Pure white indicates industrial production. Dense large lumps should also raise suspicion.

The taste of cottage cheese should be cottage cheese! There should not be a greasy film or chemical smell in the mouth. Listen to yourself and you will understand what it is about. By the way, the product with the content of vegetable fats leaves in the mouth a sugary-sweetish shade, without any sour taste.

Price. Natural homemade cottage cheese is expensive.By some standards, even very expensive. Cheap product is probably mixed up with incomprehensible rubbish or made with 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 additive to cottage cheese from manufacturers is starch. It is inexpensive, but it significantly increases the total weight of the product. But the taste is just like that, its presence is very difficult to determine. Therefore, folk wisdom has come up with a cheap, but very effective way. You only need the most ordinary pharmacy iodine.

We must take a piece of cottage cheese and drip a solution on it. Appeared blue color clearly indicates the presence of starch. If the cottage cheese is iodized in a characteristic brown shade, then you can be calm, you bought a quality product.

Air. Another simple method that gives a fairly reliable result. You just need to leave a small amount of the product in the open air at room temperature.Depending on the result, you can already judge the quality of:

1. Cottage cheese noticeably changed color to yellow, covered with a dense crust. But it did not change the taste and smell. Forced to upset you. You bought a cottage cheese product with unknown additives.
2. Cottage cheese practically did not change color, it did not flutter. There was a strong smell of souring or even fermentation. In taste, strongly sour notes became noticeable. Congratulations! You have a natural high-quality product on the table.

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

You will need only a bowl, boiling water and a piece of the mass. Cottage cheese is placed in a container, poured boiling water and gently stir. A quality product under the influence of temperature should curl up into a tight tight little ball. Bad cottage cheese containing vegetable oils should practically dissolve, leaving only small soft clots.

Similar can be called another method of verification.Cottage cheese is simply heated on a dry clean skillet. Weight with vegetable fats will melt, and a good product will curtail, highlighting a little serum.

Some more tips

Some sources claim that too fast spoilage of cottage cheese is a sign of unsanitary conditions during its production. This is especially true of the home product. Saying and the milkmaid did not wash the hands, and the udder of the cow was dirty, and the dishes, smoked for years. We dare to argue that this is not at all the case. The fact is that villagers are more concerned about the quality of their products. Otherwise, who will buy milk from them and their ilk?

Now still. Recently met on the market a sign: “Unique pink cottage cheese! From super duper cows "and something else there. And there was even a small queue. Price by the way is not much different from the usual product. And in fact no one was embarrassed by the sour amber from the counter a mile away. Never try to buy pink curd, unless it is a dye in the curd mass. A natural homemade product turns pink only in one case: it has long been asleep. Having tasted such delicacies, you can very quickly go after him to another world.Pink color is an indicator of the extreme degree of spoilage of cottage cheese!

About bitterness. Some cunning traders on the market justify bitterness in cottage cheese with phrases about wormwood on grazing, some more fairy tales. Do not believe. Cows do not eat wormwood. From the word at all. Therefore, if you are offered to try the product to the taste, and you feel a 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 the curd. And it will be difficult for you to mislead any outdated seller or manufacturer of low-quality goods.

Video: how to buy real cottage cheese, not fake