Körözött – Hungarian cheese spread

by | Sep 3, 2014 | Misc

The main ingredient of körözött was originally Liptauer or liptói túró, a sheep-milk based cheese. Liptó was a county of Hungary until the end of WWI. Liptó got disannexed from Hungary in 1919, and now it’s part of Slovakia. Though we lost Liptó, we never stopped eating körözött.

In our days körözött is made with ship’s milk cheese, or sheep’s milk cheese and cottage cheese fifty-fifty, but there are many who just use cottage cheese. If you choose sheep’s milk cheese, don’t add salt because it’s salty enough to make a tasty spread. Main spices are caraway seeds that give its unique taste and sweet ground paprika that turns its colour into nice orange. To make the cheese spread soft and smooth, it’s necessary to combine with butter or sour cream.

Körözött - Hungarian cheese spread
Körözött – Hungarian cheese spread – photo: zserbo.com

Ingredients:

  • 250 g (~9 oz) cottage cheese or sheep milk cheese
  • 1 medium red onion, finely chopped
  • 1 tsp ground paprika
  • 1/2 tsp ground caraway seeds
  • 1/2 tsp salt (in case of cottage cheese)
  • a pinch of freshly ground black pepper
  • 80 g (~1/3 cup) butter
  • 1 heaping tbsp sour cream

In a small bowl blend cheese with the butter and sour cream. Add the chopped onion, paprika, salt, pepper and the caraway seeds. Mix to combine them. Chill for 3 to 4 hours so flavours can merge. Spread the körözött on bread or a crusty bun, or it can be even filled in tomato peppers.
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5 Comments

  1. There are different recipes for Korozott. some call for capers, dijon mustard, or anchovies.

    • Really??? I would never add those ingredients to körözött, that would not be authentic.

      • I agree with you Eszter! While those are tasty additions, they certainly are not traditional to the main recipe.

  2. As a female “Brit” married to Csak Miklos, my hungarian cuisine is a somewhat hit or miss. However, have made this Hungarian Cheese recipe for many years with great success….the little ones love it as a dip with veggies, the adults on crackers. We have three Deli’s here in Calgary that stock Paprika and Goulash Creme (csipos and csemege) in a tube, which I use instead of paprika powder…..

    • Hi Anne, I’m sure paprika cream makes your körözött very tasteful, no wonder your family members adore it.

Hungarian cottage cheese

This is what Hungarian túró looks like

You often ask me what kind of cottage cheese (or curd cheese or farmer's cheese - call it what you want) I use in the recipes. In Hungary the store-bought cottage cheese is dry and crumbly as you can see in the picture. So if a recipe calls for túró, I mean this type. If you can't obtain túró, you can try to make your own from whole milk. Click on the link below.

Metric system vs cup

In Hungary metric units are in use, all the recipes on this website are based on this system, so a kitchen scale is necessary. Since I’m not familiar with cup as a measurement unit, I convert grams to cups by using an online converter. The values in brackets, therefore, are only approximate volumes, so, please, double-check them before you start cooking.

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