As practice shows, most modern industrially produced products are of rather dubious quality. It’s especially offensive for those products that we are all accustomed to considering natural. These include cottage cheese, which is an excellent source of calcium needed by the body. That’s why I don’t really want to buy such an expensive product. It’s better to work for the benefit of your health and take the initiative into your own reliable hands. Moreover, making homemade cottage cheese is not at all difficult, but the result is much superior in quality and taste to the store-bought product.

It can be prepared from kefir or sour milk, or from a mixture of both products. If milk has curdled when boiled, it can also make excellent curd.
To make cottage cheese at home, it is best to use natural homemade cow's milk. If this is not possible, then store-bought milk with a fat content of at least 3.2% is quite suitable. To obtain the final result of approximately 300 g of homemade cottage cheese, I needed 2 liters of milk.

The process of preparing this fermented milk product took me at most a third of an hour, but preparing for it took about two days.
So, let's get to work!
We pour the milk from the bags into a glass jar with a capacity of 3 liters - you can do 2, if you have one - and close the lid.

If possible, we place the filled vessel in a warmer place, but if this is not available, we simply leave it on the table or windowsill. After about a couple of days - maybe earlier - the milk will sour, as evidenced by the formation of two types of liquid of different consistency: translucent whey at the bottom of the jar and thick white yogurt on top.

Now you can start making cottage cheese. To speed up the process of milk souring, you can add a glass of kefir or 100 g of sour cream, or a crust of rye bread to the jar. Then it won’t even take 2 days. At the bottom of the pan, the height of which should be slightly lower than the jar, place a napkin folded into 4 (at least) layers.

Place the jar in the pan, remove the lid, and pour cool water until the glass container is full.

We put our structure on high heat, mix the contents of the jar and heat it up.

After the water boils, reduce the heat and after 5 minutes remove the jar from the pan. If you keep the curdled milk on the fire longer, the curd will turn out drier and not very tasty. Now the whey has acquired a cloudy yellowish tint, and the curdled milk has transformed into white cereal flakes.

We take a second pan, place a colander on it, cover it with a double layer of gauze, and pour the contents of the jar into the prepared structure.

After letting the bulk of the whey drain into the pan, tie gauze into a knot and hang it somewhere until the moisture stops escaping from the curd.

As a result of the manipulations with milk, we received more than a liter of whey and quite a decent amount of homemade soft curd.

All that remains is to season the finished product with sugar and sour cream, and begin the long-awaited enjoyment of its pleasant taste.

You shouldn’t rush to pour the serum into the sink. It is useful for preparing luxurious yeast or pancake dough, from which the baked goods turn out to be very fluffy and tasty.
Happy creativity!

If milk has curdled during boiling, can it be used somewhere, or is it better to throw it away? and got the best answer

Answer from Erena Kozlova[guru]
You can add a little kefir and the cottage cheese will turn out normal. Sometimes we specially made dietary cottage cheese. Milk and kefir were mixed in a ratio of 3:2 and this mixture was heated. Then the resulting curd was thrown onto cheesecloth (we have at least 2 layers, and most often 3-4 layers) and hung over something to drain. Mom most often made pancakes from whey.

Answer from Mikhail Kopylov[guru]
Making cottage cheese - what a problem...

Answer from Belozerova[newbie]
You can make cottage cheese or yogurt from it.

Answer from Yergey Zarodov[guru]
In baked goods or for cottage cheese.

Answer from Marina Olisanderovna[master]
bake pancakes or add a little sour cream, put in a warm place for an hour - you get delicious homemade kefir...

Answer from Itereruschiy[guru]
Either make cottage cheese, or knead it into pancake dough! Very tasty! Even cheese at home is made according to this scheme. Boil sour milk, discard the cottage cheese through cheesecloth, briefly baking fresh cottage cheese in the oven or microwave will turn it into cheese. Experiment, the easiest way is to throw it away!

Answer from Yana ***[guru]
There is no need to throw it away. Curdled milk can be used in baking - add to the dough instead of milk or curdled milk. That is, you can bake a pie, cookies or fry pancakes)

Answer from Elena[guru]
Pancakes, pancakes

Answer from Elena Tsymbalova[guru]
sour dough for pies, donuts. , and you can make pancakes with this kind of milk

Answer from Irina[guru]
Cool and strain through a sieve or cheesecloth. You can eat it like this, or you can squeeze out a clove of garlic, finely chop the herbs and season with mayonnaise. This thing can be spread on bread. 🙂

Answer from Tatyana Rybakova[guru]
make cottage cheese and some water for pancakes

Answer from Alina[guru]
If the milk has just started to sour and you boil it, then it won’t make tasty cottage cheese, because the acidity is very low. You can, of course, add something else (for example, sour cream, as advised here), but in my opinion this is insanity, why fix something? I would add it to the gravy and that's it. Yes, and the resulting whey will be tasteless (again due to low acidity), so the pancakes will be no good, you can just as easily make them with water

Modern food products have the ability to be preserved under certain conditions for almost any length of time. This became possible thanks to special substances called preservatives, which are now added to almost all food industry products. However, there is a certain segment of products that do not tolerate mixing with preservatives well and their shelf life remains rather limited. This article will talk about one of these products - milk, and the process that happens to it as a result of the inability to subject it to the proper degree of preservation - curdling.

What is curdled milk?

To better understand the processes leading to milk curdling, it is necessary to first understand the structure of protein molecules, which form the bulk of the organoleptic qualities of this product.

The three main proteins found in any dairy product are lactoglobulin, lactoalbumin and casein. Like the molecules of any other protein, their structure resembles a chain of a helical configuration.

There are two processes that lead to changes in the native properties of a protein - denaturation and destruction. In this case, denaturation precedes and facilitates the further process of destruction.

During denaturation protein changes its natural characteristics. Its taste, smell, color changes, it may begin to exhibit fundamentally different chemical properties, but the structure of its molecules remains unchanged.

During destruction There is a complete destruction of the usual structure of molecules, leading to the formation of completely new chemical substances in their structure. The denaturation process is reversible in some cases, while destruction is a final and irreversible process.

Did you know? The milk produced by female seals and whales has the highest amount of fat (45–50%), while the least fatty milk is produced by donkeys and horses (1–1.5%).

If we transfer all the above information to the specific case under consideration, it turns out that milk that has undergone denaturation is a sour product, and curdled milk is a product whose protein component has gone through the process of destruction.

In terms of its organoleptic properties, it is a liquid with several different levels. The upper one is more liquid and transparent, popularly called whey: it is mainly water and a small amount of proteins that have retained the primary structure. The bottom layer is quite dense and thick - these are individual amino acids, as well as fats and carbohydrates.

At what temperature does it coagulate?

For the most part, the process of destruction of any protein molecules, especially those that have already begun to lose their native properties, can be provoked by almost any catalyst of a chemical or physical nature.

For example, if you drop vinegar or citric acid into milk, it will also begin to curdle. However, the traditional and most common method for a product to achieve a coagulating state is to heat it.

Did you know? Domestic cows produce an average of 400 million tons of milk every year around the globe.

The temperature required to initiate and successfully complete the protein degradation process varies significantly depending on many parameters. For example, on the degree of preliminary denaturation, quantitative indicators of protein in the primary liquid, the presence or absence of other chemical impurities (primarily preservatives) in the product and many others. However, practice shows that, on average, at a temperature of +95–100 °C, milk curdles within 30–40 seconds.
Milk may curdle if citric acid or vinegar is added to it.

It is also possible that your dairy product will curdle at a lower positive temperature (from +50 ° C), but in this case it will be necessary for the protein contained in it to already be at a certain stage of denaturation. In addition, the protein structures of dairy products lose their original structure as a result of exposure to extremely low temperatures (from –60 °C).

Milk curdled during boiling (cooking)

It often happens that milk bought in a store or market has curdled during heat treatment. However, do not rush to throw away the product, because, despite its unsightly appearance and apparent uselessness, it can still be successfully used in your kitchen.

Below we will discuss the main reasons why the process of milk curdling occurs when boiling, as well as methods of its application.

Why

The main reason that any product containing protein, including dairy, changes its structure over time is the specific chemical structure of protein molecules. By their chemical nature, unlike fats or carbohydrates, they cannot retain their native properties for a long period of time.
And the process of increasing the temperature of the environment in which they are located only accelerates the natural course of things. However, there are a number of reasons due to which the curdling process occurs at a lower temperature or in a shorter period of time of exposure to high temperature.

These are the reasons:

• your dairy product was already sour, that is, the denaturation process has already begun in it (sometimes there is such a degree of denaturation that it cannot be detected with the help of human senses);
• you received milk mixed from different milk yields, one of which has already begun to denature;
• the cow that gave the milk you bought has latent mastitis or another disease;
• the milk has not been sufficiently pasteurized;
• your product contains catalysts (substances that change the rate of any chemical reaction), for example, soda, vinegar or citric acid.

What can you cook from it?

The best dish that can be prepared from the lower, dense layer of curdled milk is homemade cottage cheese. To prepare it, it is necessary to collect the mass that has accumulated at the bottom of the container with the product, and then, having first placed it in gauze or other fabric that has a sufficient number of pores, subject it to additional compression (for example, using a brick or a vice placed on top).

The dense mass can also be used as a base for preparing a variety of hard cheeses, but this process is associated with a large number of technological difficulties, so it is not so easy to organize at home.

Whey, a more watery and liquid layer of curdled milk, is most often used as an ingredient for preparing a variety of homemade baked goods - charlottes, pancakes, pancakes, pies, etc. Dough prepared using whey usually has a more delicate and pleasant taste than milk dough, since it practically does not contain a variety of fats and dairy carbohydrates, which interfere with the proper development of the taste of other components of baked goods.

In addition, homemade yogurts, kefir and dairy desserts are made from a dense layer of curdled dairy products. To prepare them, you need to add lactic acid starter to the separated bottom layer of your product, which is designed to increase the amount of lactobacilli contained in the mass and activate their activity. Whey is also sometimes used to prepare some soft drinks using herbs and water infusions, such as ayran.

Video: what to do when curdling milk in porridge

Important! If you intend to get curdled milk on purpose, then you do not have to boil it - just drop a few drops of citric acid into a container with a fresh product.

Why milk may not curdle when making cheese

In the process of making homemade cheese or cottage cheese, sometimes a situation may arise when the dairy product you purchased does not want to curdle. This condition is usually more typical for store-bought milk.

Several explanations can be found for the described phenomenon, the list of the most probable of which is given below:

1. You purchased milk that contains very little protein. It probably could have been diluted with water.
2. The milk you purchased was exposed to extremely low temperatures, as a result of which its protein molecules were destroyed while maintaining their natural external properties.
3. A product that is too fresh will curdle very poorly due to an insufficient degree of preliminary denaturation.
4. You have purchased for your needs a product that has a high degree of pasteurization, which almost completely eliminates the presence of various bacteria in it, and therefore the development of a preliminary denaturation process, which facilitates subsequent coagulation.
5. The milk you purchased was pasteurized at too high a pressure or temperature, which disrupts the natural structure of the protein molecules while maintaining its native external properties and reduces the likelihood of further curdling.
6. You are trying to make cheese under the wrong environmental conditions. For example, do not bring the temperature to the required level, do not use a sufficient amount of other destruction catalysts, or try to achieve the curdling process in unsuitable containers (aluminum containers, stainless steel containers).

Why milk bought in a store does not sour: video

What to add to milk to make it curdle without souring

As already mentioned, it is possible to achieve the onset of the destruction of milk protein molecules without the use of high temperatures, mainly with the help of other catalysts, mainly of a chemical nature.

Other physical methods for producing curdled milk include applying very high pressure for short periods of time, or simply waiting for a long time to allow destruction through the natural process of denaturation.

Among the chemicals most often used to obtain curdled dairy products, it is worth highlighting primarily citric acid and starter culture. Both of these substances are good because they practically do not affect the taste, smell and color of the product obtained after their use.

You can also add table vinegar, soda and any other acids and alkalis to milk, but the resulting product after their use will have slightly less pleasant organoleptic properties.

So, we hope that our article helped you answer all your questions regarding curdled milk. Many culinary experts around the world have successfully used this product in their kitchens, achieving truly amazing results.

I would like to note right away that I am a categorical fan of whole, unboiled milk, which has been consumed as food from time immemorial, and this conviction was not immediately strengthened, the stereotypes in this matter are too strong. Among a dozen Saanen and Alpine goats, we had one, rather it can be called Russian or Gorky. A milk-producing goat, at its peak 3-4 liters, the milk is tasty, odorless. But somehow buyers began to receive complaints about curdling when boiling.

Everyone’s first thought is, that’s right, sick goat, sick milk.

Yes, it’s been a long time since we delved into theory as much as after this incident.

In the dairy industry, this quality of milk is called heat stability.

I list the possible reasons for changes in milk heat resistance, according to science:

The quality of feed based on the presence of protein in it,

The quality of feed based on the presence of fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides in them,

Condition of the animal (in heat, during the colostrum period),

Intense stirring while heating (more indicative of full-fat milk rather than coagulated protein),

Acidity of milk

Milk from a sick animal

Bacterial contamination,

According to popular wisdom, it deteriorates quickly after a thunderstorm.

The California Mastitis test for Mastitis in this goat was always negative.

When checking for boiling, on some days it curdled, on others it didn’t, think what you want.

But it seems that we are coming from the wrong direction.

If you remember where boiling (PASTERIZATION) began, with Louis Pasteur.

He is considered a great genius who laid the foundations of modern medicine, but not everything is so forgive me, read the book

Bechamp and Pasteur Louis Douglas Hume, an amazing woman who devoted a considerable part of her life to the search for truth.

Just small examples.

1. Dr. Francis Pottinger conducted very interesting experiments in the 40s. In his experiments, Dr. Pottinger fed one group of cats a diet consisting of raw milk, raw meat, and cod liver oil. He gave the other group pasteurized milk, evaporated milk or sweetened condensed milk instead of raw milk.

The results were convincing and astounding. Those cats that ate raw milk and raw meat were in perfect health, lived long, happy, and active lives without any signs of degenerative diseases. But cats on pasteurized milk suffered not only from acute illnesses (vomiting, diarrhea, inflammation) but also began to develop serious degenerative diseases that are now rampant in our population (cancer, diabetes, heart disease, osteoporosis and others), although they were also fed raw meat and cod liver oil. Interestingly, the third generation of cats that were fed a diet of pasteurized milk were completely infertile, and showed downtrodden, lazy, and depressed behavior - in general, they were similar to modern city dwellers.

2. Pasteurized milk begins to rot and not sour because all the bacteria and enzymes have died. Minerals are precipitated and cannot be absorbed (hence osteoporosis), sugars are denatured and can no longer be digested (hence allergies), casein and whey proteins are denatured (the molecular structure changes) and they can no longer be digested (this leads to allergic and inflammatory diseases). reactions), and fats become toxic (allergies, inflammation, arteriosclerosis, cancer, etc.).

3. Let's look at the most common diseases in America; The number one killer is heart disease, followed by cancer, diabetes, osteoporosis and asthma. In all countries where the consumption of pasteurized milk is widespread, people suffer from these diseases.
If we look at countries where cheese consumption has tripled in the last 30 years, like England and France, Canada, and the United States, we also find asthma and breast cancer have tripled.
Guess which country has the highest breast cancer rate? Denmark, and then Norway, Holland, and Sweden. Which country do you think has the highest rate of cardiovascular disease? Denmark, and then Norway, Holland, and Sweden. What countries do you think have the highest level of consumption of mass-produced pasteurized milk? Denmark, and then Norway, Holland, and Sweden!

To be continued....

Milk has a lot of nutritional value and hence it is an integral part of our daily diet. There are many dairy products that are very widely used by people. Fresh milk usually contains many microorganisms, and it is necessary to boil or pasteurize the milk for better storage. Milk curdling is a sign of spoilage. This can happen either naturally or it can be done intentionally to produce different products. Natural souring can happen due to various microorganisms which can be harmful, but artificial sour milk can give us healthy products like cheese, yogurt, whey protein, etc. So, let's find out what causes milk to clot.
What is curdled milk?
Milk can spoil due to various reasons. The proteins present in milk become entangled with each other, forming a solid mass which is known as whey. Besides milk curdling, there are many other signs that indicate milk has spoiled. You can taste it for a sour smell or bitter taste. If milk spoils naturally, it may be due to microorganisms such as bacteria or fungi and therefore should not be consumed. But there are many products that are made from sour milk. For these products, the milk is treated with acid or beneficial microorganisms, which then cause the milk protein to coagulate. Products from these processes can be used not only for delicious recipes, but also for their health benefits.

Use of curdled milk
Although curdled milk is considered spoiled, it can be used for a variety of purposes. If milk spoils naturally, it should be used as soon as possible to avoid changes in taste. Below are some of the ways to use curdled milk.

• If milk or curdled milk spoils, it is boiled to make paneer or curd. The coagulated part is poured into the tissue and the liquid is squeezed out. Cottage cheese can be used in various recipes and in various forms. Apart from this, curd can also be produced using acid. Just add a few drops of lemon juice to regular milk and stir. The milk will turn into curdled milk within a few minutes.
• Sour milk is used to make yogurt. Milk is curdled by bacteria under anaerobic conditions, resulting in fermentation. Yogurt is a staple food in many parts of the world and is very good for health.
• Milk is curdled using rennet, which is a naturally occurring enzyme complex. This curdled milk is used to make hard cheeses such as cheddar or Swiss.
• The remaining product after milk coagulation is called whey. It is used as a food additive. In countries such as Switzerland it is used as a base for soft drinks. It is also used for the production of cottage cheese, cheese, etc.