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Cheese from North Macedonia and Montenegro

Urdăurdă

Urdă is a boundary entry, a whey cheese set by heat with no lactic fermentation and no ripening. Whey left from making kashkaval or white brined cheese is heated with stirring to 90 °C, sometimes with citric acid to bring it to pH 5.2–5.4, and held 20 minutes until the proteins float as curds. The curds drain about 8 hours and the soft, low-fat cheese is sold within days.

Recipe

Urdă, a photo from Wikimedia Commons
Photo: Illustratedjc, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Amounts from a sourceAmounts are from an industrial study at a dairy in North Macedonia using cow-milk whey. The best yield was 58 g of urda per litre of kashkaval whey at pH 5.3.
Fresh whey from kashkaval or white brined cheeseProcessed within 2 hours of draining in the industrial study[chadikovski2022][chadikovski2023]
20 % citric acid solutionto pH 4.5–6.0 in the trials (best yield at 5.2–5.4)[chadikovski2022]
Starternone; whey cheese is made without lactic acid bacteria

Total time across the recorded steps: 12 h

Start
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pH 6.1–6.2

What changes: Fresh sweet whey is drawn off from a rennet cheese

Step 1 of 4
Collect the fresh whey
Time
up to 2 h
Reported
Temperature
Not documented
Salt
None given
Acidity
pH 6.1–6.2
Measured
Flavour
Not documented
Texture
Not documented
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

Urdă is a boundary entry, a whey cheese set by heat with no lactic fermentation and no ripening. Whey left from making kashkaval or white brined cheese is heated with stirring to 90 °C, sometimes with citric acid to bring it to pH 5.2–5.4, and held 20 minutes until the proteins float as curds. The curds drain about 8 hours and the soft, low-fat cheese is sold within days. Made in 4 steps over 12 h. The longest step, drain, takes 8 h (Chadikovski A 2022) and runs at 19–21 °C (Chadikovski A 2022).

Key numbers
Main step8 hReported[chadikovski2022]Drain
Temperature19–21 °CReported[chadikovski2022]Drain
AciditypH 5.2–5.4Measured[chadikovski2022]Heat and acidify

What makes this one different

Made from the whey left over from rennet cheese, set by heat (and a little acid) rather than by bacteria, so it has no fermentation and no ripening.

Base
Sweet whey from kashkaval or white brined cheese; no milk added in the study
Ripening
None; sold a few days after making
Class
Classified as a low-fat soft albumin cheese (2022 abstract)

Related ferments

Variants

  • Mature urda (Montenegro)Kept longer in a vat (kaca) and eaten matured, instead of fresh and unsalted.

Safety

With no lactic bacteria and high moisture, urdă keeps only a short time and is kept cold (the study stored it at 4 °C).

History and sources

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

Chadikovski and colleagues call urda a Macedonian dairy product with a long tradition, usually made from the whey of kashkaval or 'beaten' cheese from sheep and cow milk. Bojanic Rasovic and colleagues (2017) describe it as a long-standing product of Montenegro's mountain areas, made mainly for its own use, fresh and unsalted, though it can be kept longer in a vat (kaca) and eaten as mature urda. Chadikovski and colleagues (2022) classify it as a low-fat soft albumin cheese.

  1. [chadikovski2022] Chadikovski A, Klopchevska J, Velickova E, Rafajlovska V (2022). The effect of whey type on the yield and quality characteristics of Urda. Mljekarstvo 72(3):151–160, doi:10.15567/mljekarstvo.2022.0304paper
  2. [chadikovski2023] Chadikovski A, Nagy A, Klopchevska J, Rafajlovska V (2023). Effect of the heat treatment time on the whey cheese yield. 26th Congress of SCTM, Ohrid, North Macedonia, 20–23 September 2023 (abstract)paper
  3. [bojanic2017] Bojanic Rasovic M., Nikolić N. and Rasovic R. 2017, Quality of "urda" obtained after production of Montenegrin semi-hard cheese, Food Research 1(5), 166–170, doi:10.26656/fr.2017.5.107 (abstract)paper