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Cheese from Minas Gerais, Brazil

Queijo Minas Artesanal (Canastra, Serro, Salitre, Araxá, Cerrado, Campo das Vertentes)queijo Minas artesanal

A farm cheese of whole raw cow milk, made within about 90 minutes of milking. The milk is set with animal rennet and pingo, the salty whey that dripped from the previous day's cheeses, then cut, hand-pressed into round forms and dry-salted twice; the whey that drips overnight becomes the next day's pingo. The cheeses ripen on wooden shelves, for at least 22 days for Canastra under state rules.

Fully documentedCheese15 days – 23 daysMinas Gerais state law (Lei 20.549/2012, then Lei 23.157/2018) and IMA ripening rules by microregion

Recipe

Amounts from a sourceAmounts are per 100 litres of milk or per kg of curd and vary from farm to farm. Faria Júnior (2007) describes the cheese as about 14 cm across and 4–6 cm high.
Whole raw cow milkFiltered within about 90 minutes of milking[campos2019]
Pingo (natural whey starter from the day before)100–500 ml per 100 litres of milk (0.2–0.5 litre in Faria Júnior)[campos2019][faria2007]
Animal rennet (calf chymosin and/or pepsin), powder or liquidDose as the maker's label says[campos2019]
Coarse salt40–120 g per kg of curd (dry salting); some makers also add 100–500 g per 100 litres to the milk[campos2019]
Starterpingo: salted whey that drips overnight from the day's cheeses, used as the next day's starter

Total time across the recorded steps: 15 days – 23 days

Start
Drag the bar or press Play
shapes, not to countLactic acid bacteriapH 6.7

What changes: Pingo from yesterday's cheeses and rennet go into raw milk within 90 minutes of milking

Step 1 of 6
Filter the fresh milk and add pingo and rennet
Time
1 h
Reported
Temperature
Not documented
Salt
None given
Acidity
pH 6.7
Measured
Which microbes the steps name, step by step
Lactic acid bacteria
Lactococcus lactis
Lactobacillus casei
L. mesenteroides
Streptococcus salivarius
Flavour
Not documented
Texture
gel
Colour
Not documented

Microbes at work in this step

salt-tolerant lactic bacteria from the pingo start the souring

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 farm cheese of whole raw cow milk, made within about 90 minutes of milking. The milk is set with animal rennet and pingo, the salty whey that dripped from the previous day's cheeses, then cut, hand-pressed into round forms and dry-salted twice; the whey that drips overnight becomes the next day's pingo. The cheeses ripen on wooden shelves, for at least 22 days for Canastra under state rules. Made in 6 steps over 15 days – 23 days. The longest step, ripen on wooden shelves, takes 14–22 days (Instituto Mineiro de Agropecuária (IMA) 2013). Lactococcus lactis, prevalent in pingo from five of the six Canastra and Salitre farms studied and Lactobacillus casei, Leuconostoc mesenteroides, Streptococcus salivarius and Lactococcus garvieae, found in some farms' pingo do most of the fermenting.

Key numbers
Main step14–22 daysSet[ima1305]Ripen on wooden shelves
AciditypH 5Measured[campos2019]Ripen on wooden shelves

What makes this one different

Each day's cheese is soured with pingo, the salty whey that dripped from the cheeses made the day before, so every farm keeps its own back-slopped culture. State rules set a minimum ripening time for each microregion.

Size
Cylinder about 14 cm across and 4–6 cm high (Faria Júnior 2007)
Minimum ripening (Canastra)
22 days under IMA Portaria 1305/2013 as amended in 2017 (revoked in 2020)

Related ferments

Variants

  • Queijo frescalIn the Mercosul technical regulation cited by Faria Júnior, a cheese that is ready to eat right after making; some Minas artesanal cheeses are also sold fresh.
  • Queijo Minas PadrãoDefined in the 1998 federal inspection regulation cited by Faria Júnior as a cheese of pasteurised whole or standardised milk, raw curd, pressed mechanically and matured for 20 days.

Safety

The cheese is made from raw milk, and state rules set a minimum ripening time to control pathogens. In a 2019 study of 78 Canastra farms, more than half of the ripened samples failed at least one legal microbial limit, with coagulase-positive Staphylococcus up to 7.6 log CFU/g and E. coli up to 5.8 log CFU/g, and one carried Listeria monocytogenes. Pingo from some farms carried Bacillus cereus.

Hazards the sources name: Bacillus cereus and B. cereus-like bacteria, at high counts in pingo from some farms; Coagulase-positive Staphylococcus and E. coli (up to 7.6 and 5.8 log CFU/g in ripened Canastra cheeses); Listeria monocytogenes in one sample; no Salmonella.

History and sources

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

Campos (2019) dates the start of production to the Portuguese in the 18th century, with methods from the Serra da Estrela. Faria Júnior (2007) notes that the flower and bud extracts used to curdle milk in Portugal were replaced in Brazil by dried, salted calf or kid stomach. Costa Junior et al. (2009) found the composition of a Canastra farm's cheese changed with the season, partly because the pingo changed.

  1. [faria2007] Faria Júnior C.L.L. 2007, Identificação de bactérias lácticas presentes em amostras de pingos das regiões da Serra da Canastra e da Serra do Salitre utilizando métodos dependentes e independentes de cultivo, master's dissertation, Universidade Federal de Minas Geraispaper
  2. [campos2019] Campos G.Z. 2019, Avaliação microbiológica de queijos minas artesanais provenientes da Serra da Canastra durante e após o período de maturação, master's dissertation, Universidade de São Paulopaper
  3. [costa2009] Costa Junior L.C.G., Costa R.G.B., Magalhães F.A.R., Vargas P.I.R., Fernandes A.J.M., Pereira A.S. 2009, Variações na composição de queijo Minas artesanal da Serra da Canastra nas quatro estações do ano, Revista do Instituto de Laticínios Cândido Tostes 64(371):13–20 (abstract)paper
  4. [ima1305] Instituto Mineiro de Agropecuária (IMA), Portaria IMA nº 1305 of 30 April 2013, art. 2 as worded by Portaria 1736/2017 (revoked by Portaria 1969/2020), text as reproduced by LegisWebspec