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Cheese from Central America

Quesillo (Honduras, Nicaragua)

A soft, white stretched-curd cheese made from raw cow milk curd that is first allowed to sour, then melted and stretched by hand in hot water until elastic. It is cooled in containers for a day, cut and sold fresh, with no ageing. Honduran researchers added pathogens to curd and measured how fast heat kills them.

Fully documentedCheese24 hSalvadoran standard NSO 67.01.04:06 defines quesillo as a type of unripened cheeseFamily: Pasta filata (stretched-curd) cheese family

Recipe

No fixed amounts recordedNo source we read gives amounts for the artisanal make.
Fresh cow milk, raw in artisanal plants[marquez2022][nso-noma]
Lactic culture or food-grade organic acid to sour the milk or curd[nso-noma]
RennetThe Salvadoran standard lists rennet or other coagulating enzymes for unripened cheeses[nso-noma]
Hot water for melting and stretching[marquez2022]
Startera lactic culture or a food-grade organic acid, which acidifies the milk or the curd (Salvadoran standard; the Honduran paper says only that the curd is acidified)

Total time across the recorded steps: 24 h

Start
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pH 5.7Milk sugarLactic acid

What changes: Raw milk curd is left to sour until it is ready to stretch

Step 1 of 4
Make and sour the curd
Time
Not documented
Temperature
Not documented
Salt
None given
Acidity
pH 5.7
Measured

In Honduras about 65% of the milk is processed raw in artisanal cheese plants. The curd is acidified before melting.

Flavour
Not documented
Texture
fresh curd with 54.62% moisture and 25.13% fat in the study
Colour
Not documented

Microbes at work in this step

Not documented for this step.

Method

Measured measured in a studySet fixed by a specification or tested recipeReported one source reports itTypical a general value, not sourced for this fermentUnconfirmed not yet checked against a source

At a glance

A soft, white stretched-curd cheese made from raw cow milk curd that is first allowed to sour, then melted and stretched by hand in hot water until elastic. It is cooled in containers for a day, cut and sold fresh, with no ageing. Honduran researchers added pathogens to curd and measured how fast heat kills them. Made in 4 steps over 24 h. The longest step, cool in containers, takes 24 h (Márquez-González M 2022).

Key numbers
Main step24 hReported[marquez2022]Cool in containers
AciditypH 5.7Measured[marquez2022]Make and sour the curd

What makes this one different

A Central American fresh stretched-curd cheese, melted from soured raw curd and sold the next day without ageing.

Milk
Fresh cow milk, whole, part-skimmed or skimmed; raw in artisanal plants
Ripening
None; eaten fresh
Composition
Salvadoran standard, moisture at most 60% for high-fat quesillo (fat over 15%) and 65% for low-fat

Related ferments

Safety

Many believe the hot melting works like pasteurisation, but it is not standardised. In a Honduran study, the calculated times for a 7-log reduction of Salmonella and Listeria were 34.7 min with the curd at 65 °C, 13.3 min at 70 °C or 5.2 min at 75 °C, and they were tested on small bags of curd the researchers had inoculated with about 6 log of each. Its authors say traditional melting risks pathogen survival and that pasteurising the milk should come first. These times hold only for curd of the same fat, moisture and salt, and do not replace hygiene.

Hazards the sources name: Salmonella enterica and Listeria monocytogenes, which a heat study added to the curd; at 48 °C there was no inactivation within 60 min; Escherichia coli O157 in raw cheeses sold in Tegucigalpa markets (2 of 18 samples, in a study the paper cites).

History and sources

Every number is labelled with how it is known. How this atlas is made

The Salvadoran standard NSO 67.01.04:06 that defines quesillo as an unripened, scalded and melted cheese was adopted by CONACYT on 26 April 2006, approved in its first update by Acuerdo 1271 of 18 December 2007 and published in the Diario Oficial on 23 January 2008.

  1. [marquez2022] Márquez-González M., Osorio L.F., Velásquez-Moreno C.G., García-Lira A.G. 2022, Thermal Inactivation of Salmonella enterica and Listeria monocytogenes in Quesillo Manufactured from Raw Milk, International Journal of Food Science 2022:2507867paper
  2. [nso-noma] CONACYT El Salvador, NSO 67.01.04:06 Productos lácteos. Quesos no madurados. Especificaciones (primera actualización), approved by Acuerdo 1271, Diario Oficial 23 January 2008 (FAOLEX copy)spec
  3. [mena2017] Mena Lozano K.D., Solís López J.E., Urbina Rodríguez A.T. 2017, Evaluación microbiológica de productos lácteos artesanales, leche cruda, queso fresco, quesillo y cuajada elaborados en la finca San Diego, municipio de Cuapa (Chontales), noviembre-diciembre 2016, monograph, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Nicaragua, Managuaother