🧀 Jāņi cheese

Jāņu siers is a Latvian fresh sour-milk cheese with caraway. Its specification as a Traditional Speciality Guaranteed (TSG) was published in the Official Journal of the EU in 2015. The cheese is linked to Jāņi, the summer solstice festival, where it is eaten with beer.

How it is made. For 10 kg of cheese the recipe uses 28–50 l of skimmed milk, 10–13 kg of skimmed-milk curds, 1.0–1.2 kg of butter or 2.5 l of cream, 0.6–1.0 kg of egg, 40–50 g of caraway and 100–120 g of salt. The milk is heated to 85–90 °C without boiling, the crumbled curd is added and heated to 65–85 °C until the whey separates. Then the eggs, butter, caraway and salt go in, and the mass is stirred at 65–70 °C for 15–30 minutes until smooth.

What it is like. A low cylinder 8–30 cm across and 4–6 cm high, pale to deep yellow, moderately salty, soft, dense and slightly grainy, with no holes and evenly spread caraway. Fat in dry matter is at most 30%, water at most 58%, salt 1.2–1.8%. Beta-carotene may be added for colour.

A symbol of the sun. The round yellow cheese stands for the sun: by cutting it, everyone takes a share of its strength. In folk songs from K. Barons' «Latvju dainas» the cheese is tied in cloth with the knot in the centre and the folds leaving «rays». Curd-making appears in records of the Riga Jesuit College from the late 16th and early 17th centuries, recipes in a cookbook of 1796; in 2003 the cheese was named «king of Latvian cheeses».

Jāņu siers or plain curd cheese? Both start from sour-milk curds, but Jāņu siers is a cooked cheese: the milk is heated to 85–90 °C, the crumbled curd is added and heated until the whey separates, then eggs, butter or cream, caraway and salt are stirred in and the mass is worked until smooth. The result is soft, dense and slightly grainy, with no holes, a clean lactic taste and pronounced caraway. It is not a ripened cheese like Cheddar or Edam, and it is not tied to one place: a TSG protects only the recipe.

Look for the name “Jāņu siers” and the EU symbol for a Traditional Speciality Guaranteed (TSG), which stands for the recipe, not the place. On the label check the ingredients: sour-milk curd, butter or cream, eggs, caraway and salt. The cheese is a low pale to deep yellow cylinder, 8–30 cm across, with no holes and evenly spread caraway. Demand peaks before Jāņi, but it is made all year; try a supermarket cheese counter or a Baltic or delicatessen shop.

Why it matters to you. A TSG protects a recipe, not a place: anyone who follows the specification may make Jāņu siers. So what matters on the label is the name and ingredients: sour-milk curd, butter or cream, eggs, caraway, salt. Demand peaks before Jāņi, but it is made all year round.