Farmer's Cheese Recipe (Tvorog)

My friends,

I've recently been thinking of how much culinary experience my friends have and how cool it would be to have them make occasional guest blog posts to share their recipes with all of us. This is the first guest post on my blog! Today we're making farmers cheese with my friend Lena, who moved to the States from the beautiful country of Ukraine.

Farmers cheese is a soft pressed cheese that resembles a cross between cottage cheese, cream cheese, and ricotta cheese.... but it's different from all three of them. Russians call farmers cheese "tvorog" and consider it a crucial part of their diet. During the cooking process, the cheese curds will separate from the whey. The process will take 24 or more hours, but it's very easy on your part.

Farmers cheese is used in many different recipes all over Eastern Europe: Ukraine, Belarus, Poland, Hungary, etc. It's perfect in baking: making tarts, cookies, cheese cake, and filling for pirogis and pies. You can also have farmers cheese for breakfast or as a snack. Just mix it with your favorite jam, raisins, honey, fruit or berries.

***One very important tip!

If this is your first time making tvorog, start with just a couple of jars. You'll be making farmers cheese with milk and buttermilk. The proportion is 3:1. So, in one jar you will combine 3 parts of milk and 1 part of buttermilk. Use just a couple of jars to experiment with the time you need to leave your milk-and-buttermilk mixture to go sour. It all depends on the room temperature of your kitchen. The warmer the kitchen, the faster the process. It will take you no less than 24 hours and no more than 48 hours to let your mixture go sour. I've made farmers cheese today. I had to let the mixture go sour for 36 hours because it was farily cool in my kitchen. But it turned out beautifully!

I will now let Lena do the talking.

Hello, I'm Lena.

After spending days trying to find farmers cheese (tvorog) in all grocery stores around Provo, Utah area, I realized that our moving to the US was not only about leaving our family behind.. there was more to that. It was also about food I was going to miss. Ukrainians love dairy products:) So do I.

Being pregnant for the first time is not fun, especially when you are craving something you cannot get.. I was craving tvorog like crazy and we could not afford to buy it every time I wanted it. So when my mom came to visit us and taught me how to make tvorog I was eating it for breakfast, lunch and dinner after that.

The recipe is so easy. It will not take much of your money or time to make tvorog.

Here are the ingredients:

• 1 gallon of milk (I use 2%)
• 1/2 gallon of buttermilk

Also you will need:

• 5-6 jars (depending on a size)
• cheese cloth 
• tall cooking pot 
• strainer 

Usually I start making tvorog in the morning so the next morning I can finish and enjoy it at lunch. Of course the period of making the mixture to go sour (obtaining its yogurt-like look) depends on where you live and how warm it is outside. I live in Mesa, Arizona, and it's already over 30 C (90 F) outside (May). If you are living in colder climates and your house is not too warm it may take longer.


1. Let's begin.

I did not use all my milk and I used a little bit over 1 quart of butter milk (but not full 1/2 gallon). As I mentioned it all depends on how big your jars are and and how many of them you are using.

2. Pour milk in each jar about 3/4 full. This photo shows how much milk I pour in every jar and the level where I stop. 

3. Add buttermilk to each jar. This is a complete look. The proportion is 3:1. Three parts of milk to one part of buttermilk. 

4. Store your jars somewhere in the cabinet where it's dry and warm, and ants-free for about 24 hours depending on the temperature of your kitchen. By that time the milk/buttermilk mixture will start looking like yogurt. See Step 5.  It may take up to 48 hours to see the mixture change ("go sour") depending how warm your kitchen is. The warmer it is, the faster is the process. Do not leave the milk/buttermilk mixture to sour for more than 48 hours. Even if you don't see the yogurt-like texture, go ahead and follow the process and the tvorog will turn out just fine. If you leave it souring for more than 48 hours, the taste of tvorog will naturally be more sour than desirable. 

5. Once you see the yogurt-like texture, you can put your jars in a cooking pot and finish the cooking process. I use a tall wide cooking pot. You can also put a thin kitchen towel on the bottom of the pot to prevent the jars from overheating. If your pot is not wide enough you can use two or more, or you can go two rounds. Mine can fit only four of my jars that's why I go two rounds.

6. Put the jars in a cooking pot, fill in the water just 1 cm (about 1/2 inch) below the top of a jar or stop right where your mixture ends. Turn the stove on medium.

7. Heat the pot but do not let the water boil. Once you see air bubbles in the mixture and it starts looking like this, turn the stove off and let it stand for 30 minutes to curd. A great idicator of when to turn the stove off is to carefully lift one of the jars and see if there is a separation of the white mixture from the bottom of the jar. 

8. Tvorog will separate from liquid (which is called thrusting or whey, syvorotka, you can use it in making pancakes, crapes, bread) - this is the time to take your jars out of the cooking pot. Separation proportion is 1:1, perhaps a little less of tvorog sometimes.

9. Pour off everything from your jars into a drainer covered with a cheese cloth. Let the liquid drain into a sink or a bowl if your are going to use it somewhere else and hang your tvorog in a cheese cloth over a sink for a while to be drained off completely.

10. Here is my tvorog. It makes 2 - 2.5 lbs out of 1 gallon of milk.

Enloy!


- Lena