85 Comments
Homemade cheese never appealed to me. Curdling the milk, straining with cheesecloth and numerous other steps seemed messy and time consuming. I’ve looked into several varieties – yogurt cheese seems easy to make but a bit expensive overall. Then I found quark. Quark is a European fresh soft cheese with a mild flavor and similar in texture to whipped butter or ricotta cheese. It’s actually the most popular cheese in Germany and there are a million uses for it, from pancakes to cheesecakes and souffles. In addition, it’s naturally low in fat with only 0.2g fat per serving. It’s difficult to find prepared quark in stores, but it takes very little work to make and costs less than $2 per batch. It’s a wonderful cheese, give it a try, you won’t be disappointed.
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1 quart cultured buttermilk (1% fat)
1/4 cup skim milk, as needed
kosher salt, to taste
glass baking dish
kitchen towel, linen or cheesecloth
strainer or colander
Directions:
1. Set oven to 150F. Pour buttermilk into the baking dish and cover with a lid or tinfoil. If the lid is plastic or rubber, make sure it’s dishwasher safe – if so, it should be fine at 150 degrees in the oven. Place the dish in the oven and let it sit overnight, or about 8-12 hours.
2. In the morning, remove the dish from the oven. Place the strainer in the sink or a large pot and line it with the linen. Spoon or pour the contents of the baking dish into the strainer. You’ll notice that the curd (solid) has partially separated from the whey (liquid). Cover the cheese with the ends of the cloth and let it drain in the sink for 30-60 minutes. To speed up the process, fill a bowl or sealed container with water and place on top to weigh it down. 30 min seemed sufficient for my batch.
3. Dump the contents into a bowl and refrigerate. Once chilled, add milk 2T at a time until it is smooth and easy to spread with a texture similar to creamy ricotta cheese. Add salt to taste. Makes 8oz or about 1 to 1-1/2 cups.
| Nutrition Facts |
|---|
| Serving Size 1/2 cup Servings per Batch 3 |
| Amount Per Serving |
| Calories 65 |
| Total Fat 0.2g |
| Saturated Fat 0g |
| Total Carbohydrate 4g |
| Dietary Fiber 0g |
| Sugars 3g |
| Protein 11.5g |
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I’m determined to try it this week!!!
Hahaha, this is awesome!
I adore Quark cheese, so I’ll have to try this one out. Thanks!
hmm… there is no peanut butter in this, which throws me a little bit… but still interesting!
Haha, not yet! I’m going to try working on flavors for this cheese, perhaps a pb one! ~ Nick
I’ve never tried Quark, but I love fresh soft cheeses. I’ve gotten into quite the cheese-making habit lately. I made mascarpone, ricotta and I had a depressing little attempt at making cottage cheese. I’ll try this one next. I like that it’s low fat, since all of the ones I made before were… uhmm, not exactly!
Oh, I meant to tell you, I had a brilliant PB idea yesterday during my run (why do I think of food while I run?) have you attempted PB deviled eggs?! They must be yummy :)
Yea, I like how this one is naturally low fat but it doesn’t taste it at all! They say running clears the mind, it must make room for more important things like peanut butter ideas. I think the PB deviled eggs would be great, my friend recently told me how his family has always made egg salad with peanut butter and he won’t have it any other way. Unfortunately, I can’t stand the yellow parts of hard-boiled eggs but perhaps stuffed with pb and something else…. ~ Nick
I am impressed! :)
this is awesome! thanks for the recipe
wow less calories per 1/2 cup than low-fat cottage cheese!
That’s estimated of course, but nothing is as dense as cottage cheese! Actually, if you compare nonfat cottage cheese and nonfat greek yogurt, you’ll see that they are identical nutritionally except that cottage cheese is 33% denser hence more calories, albeit healthy ones. ~ Nick
Yum. They sell lemon quark at my Farmer’s Market – maybe you could flavor this one too? I believe they also sweeten it with sugar and it becomes a sweet dessert spread.
There are definitely flavoring possibilities here. I’m working on vanilla flavored quark, that’s my favorite of the ones I tried at the farmer’s market in San Fran, it’s great on a sauceless veggie pizza. ~ Nick
That is too easy. Great recipe and definitely worth a try. Can you use other milk besides buttermilk? Skimmed? Soy?
Well, the cultures in dairy milk are necessary to produce the cheese curds, so soy is not an option. Skim is possible but you still need to use some buttermilk for the cultures. But the buttermilk is already very low in fat (equivalent nutritionally to 1% milk) and it seems that most of that fat is removed during the straining process.
Yum! Vanilla sounds great. funny – I think we’re talking about the same vendor in SF :)
Probably, Spring Hill Farms? Their lemon is good but the vanilla is excellent! ~ Nick
This sounds great! I have a yogurt maker so I guess I could make it in there? Do you have to buy buttermilk with added cultures, or could you add a little yogurt like a yogurt starter?
Looks like it’s just waiting for a bagel or a nice crunchy piece of celery….
x x x
WOW, I’m definitely going to try this! I just have to convince my mom to let me keep the oven on overnight; she’s cheap. I’m sure once she tastes the quark, though, she’ll let me make this anytime.
Thanks!
I don’t think you’ll use all that much energy to maintain a very low temperature like that, especially since you won’t be opening it a million times. Plus you can double or quadruple the batch to make it more worth it. Enjoy! ~ Nick
Quark, my 11yo loves quark mixed with cream thickly topped on bread for breakfast. The way his great grandmother in Germany makes it for him. I also make it, but I just use milk. That is it. I let the natural yeasts in the air culture it. I was taught by my husband’s grandmother some years ago.
Now we have a local artisan dairy, Appel Farms, that makes a lovely product so we support them instead :)
Nice post! Everyone should try making cheese, it is rewarding.
Ah, Appel Farms, I wish I could find their products but no place around here sells it. You use regular milk, like skim milk? And just let it sit out open to the air? ~ Nick
I had never heard of that cheese let alone how to make it, but it sounds easy enough. I’ll give it a try and see how it turns out :)
I have seen a few recipes that called for quark cheese though I have never seen it in stores. Now I can make some at home.
Thank you for this–who knew? We had the most delicious crepes with quark cheese at Bouley Bakery in NYC.
very kewl! does it compare at all to farmers cheese?
What is farmers cheese? ~ Nick
I never heard of quark before! I would love to try it. It sounds delicious!
Do you think it would be possible to make this cheese in a slow cook? Just a bit scared leaving the oven on for so long.
Love your site.
Cheers!
Hey Helena, I have two suggestions. First, try making it on the weekend. Put it in the oven in the morning and wait for 8 hours while you’re home. Otherwise, I recommend trying this recipe for farmers cheese which I believe is pretty similar: http://foodurl.info/pgeh. Thanks for stopping by! ~ Nick
Been seeing this frequently lately and have no idea what it is. This will be very useful.
Thanks Nick, this is the easiest way yet! I am German born and miss my Quark! We use it for cheese cake and all kinds of pastries at home. There is a thing called a “Quark Maker” on the market, it cost around $50 and it’s sooo lazy, but I can’t find it anymore! The most basic use for Quark, was on Friday nights, my Father is Catholic and (way back was not allowed to eat meat on Friday) my Mom fixed him this snack: 8oz Quark (but the original, more dry version) salt, pepper to taste and 2 or 3 tablespoons of fresh chopped chives, to this he preferred fresh Whole Weat or Rye bread … after all he is was baker! I have tons, and I mean TONS of German recipes requiring quark! I used to use Ricotta Cheese, but it doesn’t work out as well, and you don’t want to try making 2 lbs cottage cheese smooth! No fun!
Thanks Nick,
The Quark Maker can be found at germancorner.com or quarkmaker.com It’s about $50 and is primarily useful for larger batches. It ultimately is a little more economical than running the oven for that long too.
I have made this. I am german and it is pretty close. I eat it with Onion and Potatoes or sweet with Strawberries and sugar. Orange Juice and sugar…..YUM
Ok, I know that you said you didn’t like to strain things. However, take plain yogurt and strain through a cheesecloth for 5-7 hours. Homemade cream cheese :)
Tons of nice Quark recipes. Very useful site.
I made this in the warmer drawer of my oven. My regular oven couldn’t be set that low. The warming drawer worked fine. I think I drained it to long. It was pretty dry. I did add 2 Tablespoons on plain yogurt to my 2 quarts of buttermilk since it didn’t say if it was cultured or not. Ikea has recipes that I wanted to try that called for it.
i am glad to find this recipe. the budwig cancer protocol calls for quark and flaxseed oil. i will give it a try. thanks.
Interesting… Well I hope you enjoy it and I hope it helps!
My oven only goes down to 170, which I’m assuming will be too hot for this recipe. I’ll have to try the food dehydrator and hope for the best…anxious to try it! :)
I haven’t tried it, so I can’t say for sure, but I think 170 should work fine. You would just want to check it at 6 hours, then again at 8 hours, to make sure it hasn’t burned or anything, but it shouldn’t. The other option is to set it to 170 and prop the door open a little bit so some heat escapes! Let me know your results!
I don’t know how late this comment is, but just for the purposes of other people reading this, my oven only goes down to 200… officially. In some ovens you can turn the dial down to where it would approximately be around 150 degrees and it’ll work fine.
I can’t get cultured buttermilk. Would real, old-fashioned buttermilk (i.e. the liquid left from churning butter) work for this, or are the cultures that are used to make the cultured buttermilk necessary.
From what I read, using uncultured buttermilk will give you the wrong kind of bacteria. What I would suggest is to try either this recipe which uses regular milk or try something like farmers cheese which also uses regular milk. They both seem pretty similar though. Give it a go, let me know!
Thanks for the quick reply, Nick. My ultimate goal with this is to use it for (I hope) making Liptauer or Korozott.
I haven’t heard of either of those, but I just looked them up and they sound quite interesting. Let me know how this winds up working out (the Quark and the Hungarian cheese spreads).
Shall do. The spread is usually put onto brown bread, such as pumpernickel, and is delicious. Am still debating whether to try homemade quark for it or if something local may work. Either way, once I’ve tried it, I’ll post a follow up. Thanks again.
The lowest my oven will go is 170 degrees. Is that too hot?
Sorry, I should have read the earlier post. I just saw that now. I’ll try it and let you know how it goes.
=) Please do, I’m curious!
The process worked fine and I didn’t leave the oven door open. I may have left it cook a little too long, though, I left it in the oven for around 11 hours. The texture is a little more grainy than it is smooth. Is it supposed to be this way?
It should be a little bit dry, I’m not sure about grainy though. It’s possible you overcooked it a bit, make sure you mix in some salt and milk to achieve a creamy texture. See if that helps…
I ended up putting it in my food processor to get it the smooth texture I wanted. This worked great! Then I plan on serving it with a cranberry orange sauce on top with cinnamon sugar pita chips. Tastes great!
Yum! Are you serving this on Turkey Day?
I also have the 170 degree oven problem. I cooked mine for about 7 hours and it was grainy. It tastes the same….I mixed it with a packet of vanilla Quarkfein and poured it over fruit. Yummy, but a little grainy. Will try to borrow an oven for the next batch!
Thank you so much for posting this recipe. I love Quark and have some cheesecake recipes that are based on it that I have not been able to use for 20 years. Cheesecake is soo much better with Quark!
You’re welcome! I’ve never had a quark cheesecake – do you have a recipe handy you could share? I’d love to try it!
Dough: Mix 200g all purpose flour, 1tsp baking powder, 75g. sugar, vanilla, 1 egg. Add 75g cold butter cut into pieces and mix quickly until the dough is smooth. Roll out 2/3 of the dough onto the bottom of a springform and roll the rest into a roll and press up against the side of the springform (about 3cm high).
For the filling: beat 750g Quark, 150g sugar, 1tsp vanilla, 4 egg yolk, 250ml milk, 1 tablespoon of maizena and lemon zest to taste for about a minute on high. Beat 4 egg whites and 1 tbs sugar until stiff and fold into Quark mixture. Put mixture into springform and make sure that the top is even. Bake in the middle of the oven for 60-70 minutes @ 170c (350C). Let cool for 10 minutes then loosen the edge of the cake from the form and let cool completely.
The recipe above is for the standard cheesecake. I have another recipe for a creamy uncooked cheesecake made with quark (uses gelatin) but it is made with raw eggs, so I think most people would shy away from that.
What an interesting recipe. A few questions though: What’s maizena? And why 4 egg yolks instead of 2 eggs?
As for the raw one, I would certainly try it if someone made it, but I probably wouldn’t make an entire one for myself or a gathering. Sounds good though.
oops sorry, Corn Starch! The egg whites get used in the recipe – they get beaten and folded into the mixture. It makes the cake much lighter.
Yes it is good. So far I’ve been lucky, I also make a chocolate mousse using raw egg whites and no-one has ever gotten sick…
I live here for 10 years and have never been able to find quark in the stores. Now I FINALLY get closer to making a real cheese cake again, with real quark, and my oven won’t allow a setting under 170 degrees Fahrenheit! Is there still hope? Can I heat it up with a higher temperature?
Haha, hey Ulla – never fear! Read comment #27 and #30 above, other people had the same issue. 170 degrees should work fine, but leave the oven door open just a little bit. Give it a try and let me know!
Thanks for your quick response! Sorry…I got bored around comment #20. It’s in the oven now and so far doing well. For a family size cheese cake with grandma’s recipe, I’ll have to plan for 2 gallons of buttermilk, though.
Got my first batch done. 170 degrees is too hot with my oven. With the door slightly open, the oven actually makes an extra effort to hold the temperature. I’ll try again, and take it out earlier. Even 6 hours is too long. The quark will get too dry. I’ll try another batch using our dehydrator.
Hmm…Yes, the oven will attempt to make up the difference. What happened with the first batch, just too dry? Did all the whey separate though?
Yes, all seperated. But it sort of cooked it out. At first it looked ok, when I poured it into the cheese cloth, but after the rest of the liquid dripped out, it was just too dry. Wouldn’t even mix up with the milk. It stayed grainy. I won’t give up just yet!
Good! Don’t give up, and when you figure it out with that 170 degree oven (or dehydrator) let me know so I can inform my readers! Thanks!
I’m very happy to read this. I am first generation American, visited my Grandparents in Germany every summer and eventually married a boy from their town. My first two were born there! We smuggled our third back when we moved back to Cincinnati. Our favorite Quark recipe (beside Quark-torte) is Quark w/ Chives and salt served with new potatoes. Boil the potatoes with the skin and serve. Everyone peals their own potatoes and dip in the quark. You can also add pepper and a bit of garlic. YUMMY!
Very cool – I assume Quark is fairly common in Germany? It’s so non-existent over here.
So everybody sits down with some potatoes, peels them at the table and dips right in the Quark w/ chives? That sounds very interesting. I’ll have to give it a shot!
Do you think 110 degrees would work? That’s what my oven is at with the pilot on. If I turn it on low it jumps up to 200 or more.
Hmmm, I think it might. 200 degrees sounds a bit too hot. I would give it a try at 110 degrees and let it go for at least 10-12 hours, then check it and keep cooking if the whey hasn’t separated enough.
Thanks for posting this. Delicious!! I had no idea what to expect, never having had Quark before. It’s **so good** and so easy to make! I had to try it while it was still draining and warm. I don’t think it will need salt or milk — I like the flavor and consistency just as it is. Truly not cream cheese, and much tastier. I can’t wait to make a quarktorte and other things with it. A German-born friend had talked about Quark, so I went looking for instructions on how to make it. I’ll make a larger batch next time so that I don’t need to make this so often. I ended up with about 3/4 of a cup from a quart of buttermilk. How easy!
Excellent, I’m glad you liked it! Depending on how much you drain it you may not need (or want) to add milk, and the salt is all about personal preference.
It has a very mild taste, almost nutty, but no bite like cream cheese does. It truly is a great cheese. If you use it in any recipes you’ll have to let me know how it turns out!
This sounds wonderful. Regarding the temperature of the oven: I have an electric stove. I make yogurt in my oven overnight. I turn the temperature dial very slowly until the red indicator comes on, then just a skosh more like 1/16 or 1/8 of an inch. This is about halfway between Off and Warm (which I think is 150 degrees on my oven), but perhaps this method would work for others. Your ovens probably come on before reaching any of the settings.
That should work fine. If you have a meat thermometer (or any thermometer really), put it in the oven to measure the temperature, and try to get it as close as possible!
Bought the buttermilk this morning…it’s going into the oven tonight…Thank for sharing this!
Sure thing, let me know how it turns out for you! I want to make sure it’s working for everyone!
My quark was only a moderate success…U have a not-very-accurate gas oven…I set it to “warm”, but in the morning my quark was kind of tan in color & the texture was off…Definitely a problem with my oven and not with the recipe…Will try it again, but with less “cooking” time
Hmm, that’s too bad. The quark was tan or the surrounding liquid? The liquid (whey) will be a tan color but the quark should be floating in the tan-colored whey and should be white. If not, it’s likely that you basically cooked the quark too so it turned a little brown =)
It seems that “warm” was too hot but it should work at higher temperatures too, so you’ll definitely need to try less cooking time. Keep me informed!
I tried your recipe but I USED GOAT MILK INSTEAD. i PUT THE LIQUID IN THE DEHYDRATOR INSTEAD OF THE OVEN AS MY OVEN DOES NOT GO SO LOW. I GOT ABOUT 2 TABLESPOON QUARK OUT OF THIS WHAT DID I DO WRONG. i WAS A LITTLE DISAPPOINTED AS i WAS LOOKING FORWARD TO MY QUARK
Hey Joy, I’m no quark expert, but im sure it has something to do with the fact that you use goat milk and a dehydrator. Even if your oven doesn’t go down that low, you can just set it to the lowest setting and even leave the oven open a little bit, but I highly recommend you use cows milk first!
Wow – this is my first time to your site and the first time I’ve heard of quark. My kids go through so much cream cheese – and that’s getting expensive! I’m going to try quark and see how they like it!
Well thanks for stopping by Susan! Let me know how it goes!
Turned out great! I used 2 quarts whole-milk buttermilk, and smoothed with cream after refrigeration the next day (I have kids who need to gain weight :)). It made about 3C quark. Everyone liked it – even my most finicky 6yo! We spread it on homemade blueberry bread for lunch.
Wow, that’s excellent! Homemade blueberry bread sounds like the PERFECT surface to eat this off of. Is it a quick bread, like a banana bread?
Yes, it’s really a blueberry muffin recipe that I put into small loaf pans – baked roughly 35-40 min.
OMG I can hardly wait to try this. I was like you, deterred by all the numerous steps for most quark recipes. I lived in Germany as an exchange student and during the summer I was there it was hot as the dickens (exacerbated by the lack of a/c to which I’m accustomed being originally from Florida) and we would dollop this on top of bowls of chilled fruit to cool off.
Thanks man!
Oooh, interesting idea. I’ve never been to Germany to experience the true thing but I just couldn’t pass up the chance to make homemade cheese! So far it’s the only kind I’ve ever made. I was skeptical at first, but it turned out wonderfully. Enjoy!
Hello and thank you so much for your quark recipe having no rennet. I am on Dr Budwig diet and have had problems getting a cheese without rennet. Thank you so much!
You’re very welcome. Enjoy!
This will be great for making some German-style cheesecake!