Areesh cheese substitutes

Fresh curd cheese with a similar mild sourness and low fat content.

Best for

Egyptian breakfast with tomato and cucumber, spreading on eish baladi, salads, low-fat cooking

The best all-round answer and available everywhere. Two differences to manage: most cottage cheese has larger discrete curds and a little added cream, so it is lumpier and richer than areesh, and it carries free liquid. Drain it in a sieve for twenty to thirty minutes, then mash until it looks like a rough, cohesive paste rather than separate curds. Low-fat or dry-curd cottage cheese, where you can get it, matches areesh's leanness almost exactly.

Low-fat European fresh cheeses with a mild lactic sourness.

Best for

breakfast plates, spreading, baking and savoury fillings, mixing with herbs

Genuinely very close, and if your shop stocks either, this is the swap to make. Both are lean, mildly sour drained curd cheeses, which is exactly what areesh is. Quark is smoother and denser than areesh, more like a thick paste than a crumble, so breaking it up with a fork and a teaspoon of milk restores some looseness. Farmer cheese sold dry-curd is drier and crumblier, closer to areesh straight out of the packet. Both are usually unsalted, so season lightly.

The real cheese, made with two ingredients and a piece of muslin.

Best for

authentic texture and salt level, breakfast plates, controlling the fat content, large quantities cheaply

Heat the milk to about 180F, stir in the lemon juice, rest ten minutes, then drain through cheesecloth for two hours until it is firm enough to crumble. Use skimmed or semi-skimmed milk to match areesh's leanness, or whole milk for a richer version. Traditional areesh comes from milk that has soured naturally rather than been acidified with lemon, which gives a slightly more complex tang, but the acid-set version is close and much more predictable.

Strained yoghurt, thick and spreadable with a strong cultured tang.

Best for

spreading on bread, breakfast plates with olive oil and zaatar, dips, dolloping onto cooked dishes

Excellent for spreading and wrong wherever crumbles are wanted. Labneh is completely smooth with no curd structure, so a breakfast plate becomes silky instead of textured, and the yoghurt sourness is noticeably stronger and more assertive than areesh's gentle tang. It is also creamier and higher in fat unless you use a low-fat yoghurt to make it. Where the recipe says to crumble the cheese over something, choose cottage cheese or quark instead.

Soft fresh curd cheese with the right texture and none of the sourness.

Best for

savoury fillings, baked dishes, spreading, sweet dishes with honey

The texture is right, soft and slightly granular, but two things need fixing. Ricotta is sweet rather than sour, so lemon juice is not optional if you want it to read as areesh, and it is unsalted. It is also considerably richer, which matters if the reason a recipe calls for areesh is that it is a low-fat cheese. Drain it in a sieve for an hour first, because ricotta holds much more free liquid than areesh does.

Brined cheese pushed as far toward mild as it will go.

Best for

when nothing else is available, salads, cooked fillings

Honest assessment: this is the least-good option here and it still works in a pinch. Feta is several times saltier than areesh and sharply tangy, so an Egyptian breakfast plate made with it tastes like a Greek salad, and the firmness is wrong for a soft spread. Rinsing and a thirty-minute soak, then mashing with a spoonful of yoghurt, brings it into the right neighbourhood. Do not add any salt, and expect the plate to taste stronger than intended.