🥛 Fresh cheeses

Fresh cheeses are cheeses without ripening, ready to eat shortly after manufacture ¹. The group includes cottage and cream cheese, queso fresco, paneer, chhena, ricotta and mozzarella. What unites them is not how the milk is coagulated but that the cheese is not aged after curdling.

The rules for this group come from Codex standard CXS 221-2001: such cheese conforms to the general standard CXS 283-1978 and is ready to eat shortly after manufacture ¹². Besides milk, starter cultures, rennet, salt, water and vinegar are allowed, with gelatine and starches as stabilisers in the necessary amounts ¹.

The raw material is mostly cow's milk, less often goat's milk, sheep's milk or buffalo milk. Milk is set in three ways. By acid from a lactic starter culture, as in cottage cheese (quark, tvorog) and cream cheese. By rennet, as in queso fresco and leipäjuusto. By acid combined with heat, as in paneer, chhena and
⁵. After coagulation the curd is separated from the whey, sometimes pressed and salted, but not aged.

The group also includes mozzarella from the pasta filata cheeses and ricotta, which is made from whey (see Whey cheeses). There are regional cheeses too: wagasi from West Africa, set with plant sap, and rushan from Yunnan province in China, dried in thin sheets.

They are used in different ways: ricotta goes into ravioli, cakes and sweets ⁴, and paneer into vegetable dishes ⁵.

Why it matters to you. Check the producer's date: these cheeses do not ripen ¹. In pregnancy the NHS considers soft cheeses from pasteurised milk safe: cottage, cream cheese, mozzarella, feta, paneer, ricotta, mascarpone, halloumi and burrata. Products from unpasteurised milk may carry listeria, and mould-ripened soft cheeses with a white coating must be thoroughly cooked ³.