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Cheese from Mexico

Queso panela

A boundary entry, close to unfermented. Pasteurised cow milk with calcium chloride is set with rennet at about 34 °C in 40–45 minutes, cut to 1 cm cubes, partly drained and salted in the curd. The curd is moulded in basket-type plastic forms, then packed and kept chilled; the cheese is white with an inverted truncated-cone shape. One study held the pH at 6.8 until draining, and another notes little or no starter acidification, so little acid forms.

Fully documentedCheese1.7 h – 1.8 hFamily: Fresh lactic (acid-set) cheese family

Recipe

Queso panela, a photo from Wikimedia Commons
Photo: Pyb, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Amounts from a sourceAmounts are per 100 litres of milk, from two university lab recipes; one follows the process set out by Villegas de Gante and Santos Moreno.
Pasteurised cow milkParra-Ocampo describes panela as made from pasteurised cow's skim or partially skimmed milk[parra2020][ochoa2013][sanchez2022]
Calcium chloride15 g per 100 l of milkAnother study used 21 ml of a 50 % solution per 100 l[sanchez2022][ochoa2013]
Liquid rennet15–30 ml per 100 l of milk[sanchez2022][ochoa2013]
Salt600 g per 100 l of milk (another study 4.5 g per litre)[sanchez2022][ochoa2013]

Total time across the recorded steps: 1.7 h – 1.8 h

Start
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34 °C

What changes: Starting material: pasteurised milk warmed to 34 °C

Step 1 of 6
Warm the milk and add calcium chloride
Time
Not documented
Temperature
34 °C
Reported
Salt
None given
Acidity
Not documented
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

A boundary entry, close to unfermented. Pasteurised cow milk with calcium chloride is set with rennet at about 34 °C in 40–45 minutes, cut to 1 cm cubes, partly drained and salted in the curd. The curd is moulded in basket-type plastic forms, then packed and kept chilled; the cheese is white with an inverted truncated-cone shape. One study held the pH at 6.8 until draining, and another notes little or no starter acidification, so little acid forms. Made in 6 steps over 1.7 h – 1.8 h. The longest step, mould in baskets, takes 1 h (Ochoa-Flores A.A 2013). Salt is 600 % (Sánchez-Zamora N 2022).

Key numbers
Main step1 hReported[ochoa2013]Mould in baskets
Temperature34 °CReported[sanchez2022]Warm the milk and add calcium chloride
Salt600 %Reported[sanchez2022]Drain and salt the curd
AciditypH 6.8Reported[ochoa2013]Cut and stir

What makes this one different

Panela is set with rennet and salted in the curd, then drained in basket moulds that give its cone shape. It is barely soured and eaten fresh, so it belongs at the edge of fermented foods.

Shape
White, inverted truncated cone from the basket mould
Production
52.10 thousand tonnes made in Mexico in 2019

Related ferments

Safety

A very perishable fresh cheese with high water activity; it should be stored below 5 °C. Because of Listeria, the US CDC tells pregnant women, adults aged 65 or over and people with weak immunity to avoid unheated queso fresco-type cheese, even from pasteurised milk, unless it is heated to 74 °C or steaming hot.

History and sources

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

Panela is a cheese of popular consumption in Mexico; national output was 51.34 thousand tonnes in 2018 and 52.10 thousand tonnes in 2019. Parra-Ocampo, citing the Mexican agriculture ministry, ranks it the third most produced cheese in Mexico in 2018, at 11.7% of the total.

Starter
The sources we found do not say how its fermentation begins.
Microbes
No study we found names its microbes.
  1. [cdc-listeria] US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Preventing Listeria Infectiongov
  2. [sanchez2022] Sánchez-Zamora N., Cepeda-Rizo M.D., Tamez-Garza K.L. et al. 2022, Efecto del aceite de orégano en las propiedades fisicoquímicas, texturales y sensoriales del queso panela, Revista Mexicana de Ciencias Pecuarias 13(1):258–271paper
  3. [ochoa2013] Ochoa-Flores A.A., Hernández-Becerra J.A., López-Hernández E., García-Galindo H.S. 2013, Rendimiento, firmeza y aceptación sensorial de queso panela adicionado con estabilizantes, Universidad y Ciencia 29(3):277–286paper
  4. [parra2020] Parra-Ocampo K.A., Martín-del-Campo S.T., Montejano-Gaitán J.G., Zárraga-Alcántar R., Cardador-Martínez A. 2020, Evaluation of biological, textural, and physicochemical parameters of Panela cheese added with probiotics, Foods 9(10):1507paper