Make your own farmers cheese

KaltieEm

Here's a recipe for farmers cheese (Polish "ser bialy"). It's really easy, tasty, and has a lot of protein.

Take a gallon of milk (whole or 2%; it did NOT work with skim milk, and I've never tried with 1% milk). Pour into a large bowl or pot (enamel is the best, but non stick if fine too), and mix in 2 TBS of plain yogurt or sour cream. Let stand in warm place for about 2 days. The milk should turn into buttermilk, it's ready when the texture changes and it's thick. Now, put the buttermilk on the stove on medium heat and heat up mixing from time to time, until the cheese separated from whey. Do not boil! How to tell when it's heated enough? At the beginning the liquid is uniform white, with time you'll see cheese curds in white liquid (meaning still not ready), but at some point you'll notice white curds of cheese floating in yellowish water-like whey - that means it's ready! Strain through a cheesecloth mounted on a strainer and let drain for about an hour.

If you don't heat the buttermilk enough you won't get all the cheese out of your milk, if you heat too long it will be a little hard, but I really think it's not that difficult to decide when it's ready. From a gallon of milk you will get about 750-800 g of cheese, so about 1.6 - 1.8 lbs of cheese. That's a lot of cheese for only a couple of bucks! This cheese freezes very well in a plastic container of ziplock bag. 100 g of cheese (3.5 oz) made from 2% milk has 128 calories, 20 g of protein, 3 g of carbs, and 4 g of fat. Use it to make potato-cheese pierogies, or mix with some plain yogurt, green onion and radishes to make nice topping for your sandwich. You can also mix it with sour cream / plain yogurt, sugar and vanilla to make sweet crepes. I also add it to my wraps for extra protein.