Fresh cheese applications
Cottage Cheese
Cottage cheese is a creamy, granular fresh cheese with a mild flavour. It is drained, but not pressed, so some whey remains and the individual curds remain loose. Seen as a healthy snack, cottage cheese is commonly consumed with salad or bread.
In production, the challenge is to get an approximately even granule size. The curd is fragile and has to be treated gently. It is therefore only 'cut' once into approximately 6 x 6 mm cubes, before being paddled for about eight hours to release the whey and give the cheese its characteristic granular consistency. The particles are then robust enough to be rinsed in cold water to remove any residual lactose and acid.
Cream, fermented cream, or some other type of 'dressing' is added to the curd particles to make the final product. For differentiation, producers sometimes add other ingredients like vegetables, fruit, shrimps, shellfish, honey, jam or cereals.
We offer the equipment you need to produce cottage cheese gently and successfully. Our production method employs enclosed cheese vats. This controlled environment gives you a higher yield.
Learn more about our solutions for cottage cheese
White cheese
Our best-practice lines for white cheese (feta-type cheese) cover two different technologies: Ultrafiltration and recombination of ingredients.
Ultrafiltration is a way of continuously concentrating milk. The product is pushed through filters at high pressure. This gives a concentrated volume which is typically 5 times less than the milk volume. The main advantage with ultrafiltration is the high product yield. Casein, fat and whey proteins are retained in the cheese.
Recombination is an alternative to using fresh milk. The ingredients – milk powder, sources of fat and other ingredients – are recombined using a high shear mixer.
Once the cheese milk is prepared, the product is pasteurized, homogenized and acidified. Rennet is added in line at the filling machine. White cheese is filled into the package as liquid and coagulates inside the package.
Tetra Pak is home to cutting-edge expertise and state-of-the-art technologies for ultrafiltration and recombination of ingredients. Our portfolio includes dedicated lines for making BAF and GDL white cheese.
Learn more about our solutions for white cheese.
Tvarog cheese
Tvarog is a natural cheese with a fresh taste and good nutritional properties. It is highly versatile – it can, for example, be consumed as is, used in cooking or enjoyed as a sweet with sugar and jam.
Given its many areas of use, it is no surprise that Tvarog comes in different textures. The main difference between producing formed or crumbled tvarog is the process in the vat – the curd is cooled off for crumbled tvarog. When making formed Tvarog, the curd should be sticky. Therefore, there is no cooling. In contrast, the process for crumbled tvarog aims to make the curd dry and crumbly. This is achieved by first draining the whey from the vat. The whey is then cooled down and pumped back to the vat. As a final step, the curd/whey mixture is transported to a whey drainer via tubular coolers. By cooling to about ten degrees, the curd stays crumbly.
Our best-practice lines for Tvarog cheese let you produce Tvarog of just the quality you want. Our expertise help you fine-tune and tailor the lines to your operations. They also provide top level food safety and high flexibility – the best-practice lines for crumbled tvarog are easy to reconfigure, so you can start small and expand later.
What to think about when moving into white cheese
