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Natural semi-hard cheese is one of the most favorite products of milk processing. Cheese is a very tasty, nutritious product with rich taste, which is eaten as an independent dish and used in cooking as a main or additional ingredient. Cheese is ideal for making sandwiches, cold and hot dishes, sauces.

What to pay attention to

Today it is not very easy. Among the huge number of items, types of cheeses from various manufacturers, brands, you need to find a sample that will not only be tasty and healthy, but most importantly - natural.

First of all, it is necessary to exclude all samples with the name “cheese product”, since in its composition natural milk does not exceed 20%, and everything else is vegetable fats of completely non-dairy origin: cheap palm, rapeseed or Coconut oil and other milk fat substitutes. A too yellow color of the cheese indicates that it contains artificial dyes. Moisture appears on the cut of cheese products, there may be drops, especially at room temperature or when pressed on it. When eating such products, transgenic fats gradually accumulate in the human body, which further cause cardiovascular diseases, atherosclerosis, obesity and a host of other diseases.

Composition of natural cheese

When buying cheese in a store, you must carefully study the composition of the product on the label. For the manufacture of natural cheese, the following ingredients are used:

raw cow's milk exclusively of the highest and first grade (it gives the cheese all its life-giving power);
raw skimmed milk;
raw cream;
edible salt;
bacterial starter cultures and concentrates of lactic acid bacteria;
it is possible to use natural dyes beta-carotene and annatto extract.

Of course, today such raw materials for the production of natural cheese are not cheap - approximately 11 liters of milk are needed to make 1 kg of cheese. In addition, after manufacturing, the cheese does not immediately go on sale, but unlike the cheese product, it still needs time to ripen: 30-60 days. Natural cheese is not a cheap product at all. Therefore, when buying cheese, you can not think about saving.

Signs of quality

You also need to consider the following signs that indicate the quality of the purchased cheese:

On the cut, the cheese must have an even pattern, consisting of eyes of a round or oval shape (Kostroma, Estonian), irregular or angular shape (Russian), round oval or angular shape (Dutch). There should be no cracks, bumps.
The crust is even, thin, without damage, covered with a polymer film. A thick subcortical layer is not allowed.
The smell is cheesy, sweetish-spicy or slightly sour. In no case rancid, rotten, greasy. Mold is not allowed, except for special varieties.
Color from white to light yellow, even throughout the mass.
The consistency is elastic, homogeneous throughout the mass, loose, cracked is not allowed.

It is preferable to choose cheese in factory packaging, on it you can always find the composition of the product and the period by which it must be consumed. Also, factory packaging guarantees the absence of foreign bacteria.

Natural cheese contains a large number of(20-30%) of easily digestible milk protein, many vitamins such as A, E, D, C, vitamins of group B, PP, as well as a large number of useful elements: iron, potassium, calcium, magnesium, copper, manganese, sodium, phosphorus, zinc.

A small piece of cheese can relieve stress and also improve the quality of sleep if eaten at night.

Quality cheese and fresh cheese are not the same thing. A quality product meets the requirements normative documents, but if the cheese has “departed” a four-month ripening period and only then hit the counter, is it fresh

Cheese - milk product or a dairy compound product made from milk, dairy products and by-products of milk processing using special starter cultures. A cheese product differs from cheese in that it contains milk, i. part of the milk fat in it is replaced by non-dairy components.

Cheese is a highly nutritious food. It contains 15 to 25% protein, 20 to 30% fat. Cheese proteins are associated with calcium, which is why they are absorbed much better than from plant foods. It is rich not only in calcium, but also in phosphorus, salts of magnesium, potassium, sodium, trace elements that the body needs for metabolic processes, for hematopoiesis, the activity of hormones, enzymes. There are more vitamins in cheese than in milk.

What to look for when buying cheese?

Quality cheese and fresh cheese are not the same thing. A high-quality product meets the requirements of regulatory documents, but if the cheese has “departed” a four-month ripening period and only then hit the counter, is it fresh? If a young cheese went on sale the day after it was made, would it be of good quality? Practically philosophical questions that even experts won't answer. Of course, if a black-and-green fluff flaunts on a head of cheese, then don’t go to a fortuneteller - it’s spoiled by mold.

However, cheeses also have other traitorous external signs:
Cheese dough should have a uniform color from pale yellow to yellow color, but if we see white spots on the cut, this is a bad sign.

Narrow cracks-cracks instead of even eyes signal high acidity.

The uneven texture of the cheese on the cut, "blind spots" free of eyes, where they should be (for example, in Russian cheese), also give out an unscrupulous manufacturer.

How to store cheese after purchase?

Many of us habitually store cheese in the refrigerator, wrapped in "native" cellophane packaging. However, this is not the best idea.

Of course, nothing fatal will happen to a piece of cheese, but the moisture evaporating from it will condense on the film and can cause mold.

A great alternative would be to wrap the cheese in parchment. The crust may dry out a little in it, but this is just the result of evaporation of moisture. But the risk of infecting the product with a fungus becomes much lower.

4 popular myths about cheese

Choosing cheese, we are often hampered by misconceptions about this product. Let's try to understand the most famous cheese myths.

Myth #1. Cheese is the least healthy of all dairy products.

This is absolutely not true, because cheese is a concentrate of protein, calcium, microelements, and milk itself is primarily valuable as a protein food product. To satisfy a person's daily need for milk protein, just a small piece of cheese is enough.

During the maturation of the cheese mass, the protein decomposes into amino acids, including essential ones, which are not synthesized in the body on their own and get there only with food. Cheese does an excellent job of synthesizing them, while ingesting other dairy products, we simply allow the milk protein to fall into the esophagus, and it still needs to be digested.

Myth #2. Homemade cheese is tastier and healthier than what is sold in stores.

Whatever “homemade” cheese is meant, the product of the efforts of a housewife who cooked her own cheese in the kitchen in a saucepan of milk bought at the market, or the work of a farmer from a European village, the key point is the quality of the milk.

The taste qualities of homemade cheeses are quite diverse, and it is impossible to judge them, but it is very possible to pick up harmful microflora if the milk is not pasteurized.
Myth #3. Unscrupulous manufacturers use vegetable and palm oil instead of milk fat in the production of cheese, and also tint the cheese with various dyes.

Current legislation allows you to replace part of the milk fat with a substitute. The compositions of vegetable fats that are used in this case are selected so that their characteristics are close to milk fat. For example, there is a story that if moisture appeared on a slice of cheese, it means that the manufacturer used vegetable oil. This is another misconception. Milk fat and its substitutes have the same melting point, and at a temperature of 30 degrees, both vegetable fat and milk fat will melt.
As for dyes, they are even allowed by our national standard. Naturally, only natural, for example, beta-carotene. They are used to give the cheese a more intense color, since winter milk gives the cheese a pale color, and customers want to see the product in a standard and familiar yellow color.

Myth number 4. It is safer to buy cheese packaged and cut on the trading floor.

The manufacturer is legally not liable for commercially packaged cheese. The quality and shelf life of cheese packaged in a retail outlet is affected by many things, including the chopping knife and cutting board in the store, as well as the wrapping film.

When packing cheese, it is inconvenient to wrap it in inside packing film from a reel, if the packer is not left-handed, so often the cheese is wrapped, putting it on outside this film. And where the reel of film lay before packaging is a mystery shrouded in darkness. Therefore, cheeses packaged at the factory are safer. Although they are significantly more expensive.

Cheese is a tasty and popular product in our country. It is ideal in many dishes and on its own. But there is one serious problem - the quality of the cheese.

Of course, we are already accustomed to all kinds of food falsification: there is sour cream, and there is a sour cream product, there are cakes with vegetable cream and “lean butter”. Similarly, a distinction is made between cheese and a cheese product.

“Does it matter?” - you ask. After all, these two types of products are almost indistinguishable in taste (there are even very high-quality fakes), and the cost of the latter is much lower.

And I will answer: “Yes. Believe me!” The main argument in favor of cheese is its naturalness. We eat to live, not live to eat. Food should be a source of useful and important elements and compounds. The cheese product is made from harmful palm oil, which provokes the appearance of cholesterol plaques, excess weight and increases the risk of diabetes.

Ways to identify low-quality cheese:

Bend a slice of cheese (room temperature) at a 90 degree angle. If it cracked at the fold, then you have a fake.
Normal cheese should not crumble. Otherwise, it is a mixture of palm oil, milk powder and dyes.
The presence of holes. It may seem ridiculous, but it is the “leakiness” of the cheese that determines its quality. In the world of cheesemakers, a perfectly smooth texture is considered a kind of vice.
Low price. Sadly, but high-quality hard cheese cannot be cheap.

Cheese composition. Read the label. The composition of real cheese is limited to milk, starter cultures of lactic acid microorganisms, rennet or other milk-clotting preparations of animal origin. The content of salt and calcium chloride is allowed. If any of the following is on the product label, you have a cheese product:

Powdered milk
Palm, coconut or other vegetable oil
Preservatives, stabilizers, dyes and other food additives
Flavor Substitutes

The presence of vegetable fats in the product is indicated by oily drops on pieces of cheese. If, when cutting the product, a smearing consistency remains on the knife, this is a sign that the cheese is made from milk powder.

About food

When making purchases in the store, many are accustomed to paying attention only to the expiration date of the products. On the one hand, this is true, but, on the other hand, it is no longer enough. Although the timing may be optimal, the low quality of a product is determined by completely different criteria. Today we will talk about how to choose the right natural cheese.

Price. There is a common misconception that the better the product, the more expensive it is. This is not always the case, however, in the cheese issue, the price plays an important role. In general, a kg of natural cheese cannot cost less than 700 rubles. Why is that? Let's count together: it takes about 10 liters of milk to produce 1 kg of cheese. The cost of good quality milk is approximately 50-60 rubles per liter. It turns out that 1 kg of cheese already costs 500-600 rubles. And this is without taking into account other costs of the manufacturer for production. Therefore, in this matter, we can say that, yes, the price is one of the determining factors in choosing a natural product.

Label. Everything you need to know about cheese is found on its packaging. The good quality of the product is indicated by such words and phrases as “natural milk”, “pasteurized whole milk”, “edible table salt”, “rennet”. If you see "thickener" or "made from reconstituted milk" on the ingredients list, it's best to put those products aside. They are not natural.

Pay attention to the title too. You may not have cheese in front of you, but, say, a cheese product or light cheese. These products cannot be classified as natural. The "light" cheese contains a large amount of vegetable fats, and the cheese product is made from palm oil. However, today, without laboratory or express tests, it is quite difficult to determine the presence of palm oil in the composition of the cheese head. Therefore, it is better to play it safe and adopt the tips described above.

Smell. When choosing cheeses, smell is very important. If the product has no aroma at all, then this is an occasion to think about whether it is worth buying at all. An ammonia or mushroom smell is a sign of rotting for most cheeses. However, for the same Camembert of Lefkadia, the aroma of the forest, champignons and nuts is an obligatory companion. And if you catch that Camembert gives off metallic notes, it’s better not to buy it. In this situation, the storage technology of the cheese head may have been violated, which begins to deteriorate and acquire foreign microorganisms.

Appearance. Each cheese must match appearance to his sort. If this is "Skamorets of Lefkadia", then it must be light yellow, and its flesh will feel elastic to the touch. Maasdam is characterized by large even holes, or, as they are called in the professional language of cheesemakers, eyes. As part of natural gorgonzola, you will definitely see a bluish-green noble mold “penetrating” the white tender flesh. By the way, only cheeses with blue mold can have uneven color. Other varieties tend to be monochrome.

Another important tip- carefully look at the integrity of the cheese head. It should not be dry, with cracks, chips, or other damage. This is not only unaesthetic, but also dangerous to health. In such holes, a variety of fungi can easily settle, which have quite little in common with the beneficial fungi that make up the famous blue cheeses.

And finally. Choose products from a trusted manufacturer with a good reputation, specializing in the production of natural cheeses. So you can already be sure that you are buying a good quality product.