Probably making your own cheese hasn’t really crossed your mind as a parent who recently started weaning his baby. I can buy cheese from the supermarket, thank you very much!
Well yeah, but have you looked at the salt contents? It’s usually above 1 g per 100 g of cheese, even for the milder versions of cheddar for example. When I want to give cheese to my baby is either low salt mozzarella, at 0,4 g per 100 g, or curd cheese.
Now, curd cheese is the less salty version of any type of cheese you can think of. The one I buy in store has 0,06g of salt, which is like almost nil. However, it also has 3 g of sugar per 100 g of cheese (this is not added sugar though).
Luckily, if you’re into the homemade niche of things, there is a recipe for curd cheese as well. And no, it doesn’t involve some ancient methods of our ancestors or having a cow in the back yard (although… you’d know the milk is organic ha!). And it only takes 10 minutes!
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What you need to make homemade curd cheese
- 500 ml milk (not skimmed, semi-skimmed or fat free stuff)
- 2 tablespoons of lemon juice (or a small pot of yogurt)
Please do not use calcium tablets as I have seen in other recipes. There is no need to give so much calcium to a baby unless it is proven by blood tests that he needs it.
Method
Bring the milk to a boil in a pan.
When the milk starts to make bubbles around the edges, pour the lemon juice or the yogurt straight in.
Mix it all together and leave the pan on the hob for like 2-3 minutes.
Turn off the heat when there is clear separation between the buttermilk (below) and the cheese (on top).
Put the cheese you collect in a large enough strainer and let it sit for 10 minutes. This will help drain any excess liquid even more. Traditionally, gauze is used at this step; it renders a drier cheese.
Serve right away or keep in the fridge in an air tight container for up to 2 days.
What can I do with it?
Think about cheese in general and what you use it for.
Mix it with a bit of yogurt to make cream cheese.
Serve with fruit.
Add to muffins, quiches or puddings, like in my millet pudding recipe.
Let me know in the comments down below if you managed to do your own cheese and how you serve it to your little ones. Also, sharing is caring, even more so for us busy moms, so please spread the word on social media!
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