Henning’s Quark Quest

Since moving to the US in 1979, I missed quark cheese and started to develop a new process for making quark cheese at home. Requirements for me were that no additives are used (no salt, no rennet). Avoiding rennet is important since it is a little tricky to handle at home. If overdosed, it adds some unwanted flavor to the quark. We do not need it so let’s not worry about it.

I started exploring different methods, but only succeeded in 1982 when a colleague at the University of Massachusetts Amherst told me that buttermilk has the right culture for converting milk into quark. My best success is described in the recipe shown below. Many people asked for the recipe and succeeded with their own home-made quark. The following is written as an express manual for quark making and for enjoying quark cheese.

Quark making has become most easy. Please try and taste yourself. In case of suggestions or experience to share, please contact me. Enjoy !

Henning Winter (winter@ecs.umass.edu )

Making of Henning’s Quark Cheese

Ingredients

1 gallon of milk (I use 2% type milk)

buttermilk (smallest unit is 1 quart; the culture differs from brand to brand)

Proceedings

Open the jar of milk (needs to be fresh at that time) and replace about half a cup of the milk with buttermilk. Mix gently to distribute the buttermilk culture throughout the milk. Close cap onto the gallon container (jar) as is and keep container in a warm spot (somewhere in between body temperature and 50^oC). Wait for about 3 days until the culture has grown and the milk has clotted (looks cloudy). No stirring recommended.

As finishing step, remove most of the wey. To get prepared, place sieve (1 gal. size) into a large pot (for catching way from the sieve) and lay cotton cloth (thin dish towel) into sieve. Now you are ready for separating the quark from surplus wey. Transfer the batch of clotted milk and whey into this cloth covered sieve, cover with lid, and keep for about one day in a cool spot (nothing extreme). Sometimes you need to wait longer. You can choose how dry or moist you like your quark. Periodically remove the whey that has collected in the pot. The quark will remain in the cloth in the sieve. It will look white and moist. Very inviting.

Transfer the quark from the cloth into a small container. Keep refrigerated until consumption.

Stringy Versus Grainy

The quark will be stringy, more or less, depending on all kinds of influences. Stringy like cheese on a pizza, but not nearly as strong. To get a grainy quark instead, heat the coagulated milk culture before draining. Heating to about 40oC is sufficient. The grainy quark will drain faster as you will realize.

Comment on Milk Sterilization

Freshly purchased milk from the store is already sterilized. It should not be preheated before making quark. When starting out, I was advised to preheat the milk, but this turned out to be unneccessary.

What can Go Wrong?

Quark making is so easy that it is difficult to fail. However, I failed a few times when a foul culture took over. The reasons were an old buttermilk culture (contaminated with the wrong culture) or a milk temperature which was too low during the growth of the culture. You will notice the smell. It is quite memorable.

*https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quark_(dairy_product)
**https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quark