How to Make Quark (Fresh Cheese) from Kefir
June 29th, 2013 in Tips, Advices & How-to by Julia Volhina
Total cooking time: 9h
This is somewhat easier way to get quark (fresh cheese): it requires less time since you don’t need to sour milk and such, since kefir is used instead.
There is a trade off to that of course, the taste of quark will depend greatly on taste of kefir itself, as well as its fat content. So use good quality kefir to prepare quark.
Note: 2 quarts of low fat kefir will make you about a pound of quark.
Ingredients and Tools:
- 2 quarts of plain unsweetened unsalted kefir
- Cheesecloth
How to prepare, step-by-step:
- Prepare ingredients:
- Pour kefir into smaller pot:
- Pour of water into bigger pot and put small pot in like shown in the picture (you want to have enough water in big pot to go over the level of kefir in small one if possible, but not too much to spill while boiling):
- Put this 2-pot-“construction” on the burner and bring water to boil, let it boil for about 5 mins:
- After that turn heat off and let it all cool down until water is warm (not hot anymore). Then take small pot from bigger one, remove water from bigger pot and put on top a colander with few layers of cheese cloth arranged in it:
- Pour content of small pot into colander:
- Let excessive liquid to strain off for couple of minutes:
- After most of liquid is gone pull cheesecloth tips together:
- Wrap quark in cheesecloth and gently squeeze more liquid off:
- Secure top part of cheesecloth with a knot, and hung it over a pot or sink to drain more liquid (for couple of hours, overnight is good too):
- Unwrap quark from the cheesecloth:
- And use it: as a food alone with sour cream and sugar, or as a part of any recipe which calls for quark (fresh cheese):
Tip and Advises
- The liquid drained from sour milk after cooking it can be used to prepare okroshka soup (instead of kvass or water) or in crepes instead of milk or kefir.
Wow. I’m intrigued! Will try this at home this weekend. I have kefoi grains and I’m starting to set sick of drinking kefir. And I’ve been looking to make quark for a while as you can use it in a lot of German recipes such as Topfenschmarrn and Eierschecke.
I never knew making quark could be this easy. I may want to try this at home, probably with some good kefir that I can find. What would be a good dish that I can take advantage with the quark?
Easiest, you can eat quark with sour cream and a bit sugar on top of it, or you can look at recipes here.