Knafa Bjoz

Cheese for knafeh

Nabulsi, Akkawi and Antakya künefe cheese, how to take the salt out, and cream fillings instead of cheese.

By Knafa Bjoz editorsPublished

Also known as: knafeh cheese, kunafa cheese, akkawi, nabulsi, جبنة الكنافة

The cheese makes or breaks a knafeh. It has to melt and stretch, and it must not taste salty in a sweet. Food scientists testing Nabulsi cheese put it plainly: for high-quality kunafa, the cheese “should show meltability and high stretchability”.[2]

Nabulsi

  • What it is. A white cheese kept in brine, and the dominant brined cheese in Jordan and neighbouring countries. It is typically made from sheep’s milk, though cows’ milk is also used.[1]
  • Salt. It is stored in brine of more than 18% salt for up to a year.[1]
  • Before use. It is soaked in water to remove the salt, usually overnight.[1]

Akkawi

  • What it is. A white brined cheese that originated in the city of Acre (Akka in Arabic), which gives it its name. It is widely made in Lebanon, Syria and Cyprus.[3]
  • In knafeh. Lebanese breakfast knefeh uses desalted Akkawi as its bottom layer.[6] Anissa Helou insists on “akkawi and not some cheap mozzarella”.[4]

Antakya künefe cheese

  • What it is. The registered recipe for Antakya künefe requires a fresh local cheese made in named districts of Hatay.[5]
  • Salt. The fresh cheese has very little salt, about 0.15%.[5]
  • Freshness. It keeps only two to three days. Because it is made from raw milk, it sours as it ages and loses its stretch.[5]
  • Salted type. There is also a salted type. It is put in drinking water the day before, and the water is changed every few hours until all the salt is gone.[5]

How to take the salt out

Soak the cheese in water and change the water regularly. Helou changes it “every 15 minutes or so, until the cheese has lost all trace of saltiness”.[4] For a very salty cheese, plan ahead and soak it overnight[1] or from the day before.[5] Taste a small piece before you use it.

Soaking also softens the cheese. In one study, desalted Nabulsi was much less hard than the same cheese straight from the brine.[1]

Cream instead of cheese

Some knafeh uses cream in place of cheese. Helou gives a version with qashtah, Arabic clotted cream.[4] See also Osmalieh and Egyptian konafa.

Why cheese stretches at all is explained in The science of knafeh.

Sources

  1. 1.Khaled Abu-Alruz. Quality of White-Brined Nabulsi Cheese Made with Different Proportions of Sheep's and Cows' Milk. Current Research in Nutrition and Food Science Journal, 2023, vol. 11, no. 1.
  2. 2.Mazahreh A.S. et al.. The Effect of adjusting pH on Stretchability and Meltability to White Brined Nabulsi Cheese. American Journal of Applied Sciences, 2009.
  3. 3.Kamleh, Olabi, Toufeili et al.. The effect of partial substitution of NaCl with KCl on the physicochemical, microbiological and sensory properties of Akkawi cheese. Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture, 2015, vol. 95, no. 9, pp. 1940–1948.
  4. 4.Anissa Helou. my favourite breakfast: ka'ket k'nafeh. anissas.com.
  5. 5.Antakya Künefesi, geographical indication registration no. 101. Turkish Patent and Trademark Office (TÜRKPATENT), 2008. In Turkish.
  6. 6.Nadiya Ibrahim. Breakfast of Kings. Food Heritage Foundation.