Farmer's Cheese (творог)

I recently stumbled across a recipe for syrniki. They are essentially mini pan-fried breakfast cheesecakes. They're one of those simple recipes that relies on getting all the details just right. You only need cheese, eggs, sugar, flour, and a bit of vanilla to make them, but too much moisture or too much flour will throw the consistency off and result in cakes that either fall apart or end up distressingly chewey and tough.

One of the things that makes this recipe so tricky is that different cheeses will have different moisture contents and it can be difficult to get the moisture just right. Cheeses with stabilizers added can't really be drained to reduce the moisture either, so adjusting it to the necessary level can be nearly impossible. One YouTuber's solution to this is to make her own cheese. This way you can control the exact consistency and moisture content. Although it does add a bit more time and effort.

This was my first time culturing a cheese with kefir. Most of the cultured cheeses I've made have been inoculated with either buttermilk or yogurt depending on whether I was looking for a mesophilic or thermophilic culture. For a few I've used commercial cheesemaking cultures. Helen (the YouTuber who posted the recipe) recommends using kefir + whole milk and then incubating it at ~30°C for 9 hours. I was happy with the results this produced, but I'd be curious to try it with either a longer incubation time or a higher temperature. I felt like the curd wasn't quite as firm as it should have been. And, given that a lot of the cultures in the kefir I had were thermophilic, I feel like incubating it at 30°C might have been sub-optimal. The low-temperature method certainly works. I just wonder if a higher temperature might have given a slightly better result.

Farmer's Cheese

Slightly adapted from Helen Rennie

Ingredients

• 2L whole (3.25%) milk
• 2 c. plain kefir

Directions

1. Shake the kefir and stir it into the milk.
2. Incubate at 30°C (90°F) for 9-12 hours¹. (And InstantPot works well for this. You can use the yogurt setting.)
3. Once the milk has thickened and formed a soft curd, preheat the oven to 180°C (350°F).
4. Cover and bake at 180°C (350°F) for 50-60 minutes.
5. Line a colander with 3-4 layers of cheesecloth or one layer of butter muslin and drain the curds.
6. Lightly cover the draining curds so the surface doesn't dry out and allow them to continue draining overnight.
7. By the next morning, your cheese should be ready to use!

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¹ I actually think that 45°C (113°F) would be a better incubation temperature for this cheese, but I'm not sure how long it would need at that temperature. I'd guess around 4-6 hours, but I'd need to try it once or twice to dail in the timing. If I were doing this at the lower temperature 30°C incubation again, I'd probably leave it for the full 12 hours. Nine hours was okay, but I think it could've used more time. ^Back