In June, the Latvian night barely gets dark. Bonfires burn in the fields, people wear crowns of flowers and grasses, a mug of beer in hand. And in the middle of the table sits a flat, pale-yellow, disc-shaped cheese: Jāņu siers, the cheese of the Jāņi midsummer festival. Caraway seeds are scattered through every cut face, and the first bite gives a fresh lactic tang, followed closely by the aroma of caraway.
The method is surprisingly close to ordinary kitchen work, with no aging room and no special cultures. You warm milk, add curds, separate the whey, work in egg, butter, salt, and caraway, then wrap the mass in cloth and let it set into a round. It is a fresh cheese you can make from milk and cottage cheese, so it comes together in a home kitchen overnight. The one thing to watch is temperature: heat the milk to 85–90°C and never let it boil. Get that right and most failures disappear.
A cheese shaped like the sun, for the shortest night
Jāņi, the celebration of the summer solstice, carries more customs than any other festival in Latvia. People decorate the house with flowers, herbs, and grasses, weave wreaths, sing, light bonfires, and prepare special dishes. The product specification submitted to the EU for this cheese even records that the German crusaders who came to the Baltic coast in the 12th century were astonished at the scale of the festivities around the Jāņi bonfires. Two things named as essential for that night are beer and Jāņu siers.
The round shape has meaning. Around midsummer it was customary to eat round foods, which were seen as symbols of the sun. The circular form and yellow color of Jāņu siers are likened to the sun too, and cutting the cheese and sharing it is compared to each person receiving a share of the sun's power. Latvian public broadcaster LSM described this symbolism in its 2015 article on the cheese winning EU protection.
The name Jāņu siers also appears in Latvju dainas, the folk-song collection compiled by Krišjānis Barons between 1894 and 1915. In the songs, wrapping the cheese in cloth and tying it is sung of as a special ritual: the knot is placed at the center of the circle, and the folds of the cloth are arranged so that they leave rays like sunlight on the surface.
The combination of ingredients has not changed for a long time either. The specification explains that the pattern of milk and curds plus butter or cream, eggs, salt, and caraway is recorded in many books of the 19th and 20th centuries, starting with a cookbook published in Jelgava in 1796. A mid-19th-century cookbook also preserves the advice that, depending on how sour the curds are, adding more milk makes the cheese sweeter. The idea that sourness comes from the curds and sweetness from the milk is a useful guide when adjusting the proportions at home.
In November 2015, Jāņu siers was registered as a Traditional Speciality Guaranteed (TSG) in the EU. TSG protects a traditional method and recipe rather than a place name, and according to the cheese website run by the Latvian Country Tourism Association, a registration requirement is that the food has been handed down for at least 30 years. Today it is made all year, not only at midsummer, and at the 2003 Latvian regional cheese day it was given the title "King of Latvian cheeses."
Ingredients (one cheese about 15 cm across, serves 6)
The EU specification gives a formula for making 10 kg: 28–50 L of skimmed milk, 10–13 kg of skimmed curds, 1.0–1.2 kg of butter, 0.6–1.0 kg of shelled eggs, 40–50 g of caraway, and 100–120 g of salt, all as ranges. The table below scales those proportions down to an amount a home pot can handle and swaps in widely available cottage cheese.
Caraway seeds are often missing from the spice aisle of an ordinary supermarket; look for them at an import grocery or online. They look like cumin, but the aroma is completely different, and substituting cumin will not give you the scent of Jāņu siers, so this is the one ingredient to get right. In the specification, butter can also be swapped for cream. Using cream gives a slightly smoother mouthfeel.
Some cottage cheese contains salt and some does not. The specification gives a finished salt content of 1.2–1.8%, so check the salt on the label before deciding how much to add and you avoid an over-salted result. If the label gives no figure, start with 1/2 tsp.
How to make Jāņu siers
Prep takes about 10 minutes, heating and working the mass about 50 minutes, and setting in the mold with cooling at least 2 hours. A thermometer keeps you from guessing in both the stage where you warm the milk without boiling it and the stage where you knead after adding the egg. A heavy-bottomed pot is less likely to scorch.
Both the stage of warming the milk and the stage of kneading the mass are hot. When straining the hot whey, work with the bowl on a stable surface and watch for burns. This cheese also contains egg and dairy, so it is not suitable for anyone with an egg or milk allergy.
If the mass never comes together while you knead, a lot of whey is still left in the curds. Raise the heat a little and stir in a turning motion across the bottom to drive off moisture. If it instead crumbles apart, it has been heated too long. Bring the temperature back to 65–70°C and keep working without pausing for a smoother result.
Sour curds, sweet milk: the ratio changes the taste
Latvian households have traditionally made this cheese with homemade curds. Curds made by letting milk sour naturally vary in sharpness from day to day. That is why the 19th-century cookbook cited in the specification says to change the amount of milk to suit how sour the curds are. Store-bought cottage cheese tends to be mild in acidity, so the 1.5 L of milk in the table leaves a pleasant, gentle sweetness of milk.
As a guide, reduce the milk to 1.2 L if you want more tang, and increase it up to 2 L if you want it mellower. More milk means more whey and a slightly longer kneading time. Fat content affects the result too. The specification's formula uses skimmed milk and skimmed curds, and sets the fat in the dry matter of the finished product at 30% or less. Made with plain whole milk, you get a slightly richer, softer mass than the local product.
According to the specification, the color of Jāņu siers ranges from pale yellow to yellow, and β-carotene may be added as a colorant. Made at home, the color depends on the amount of egg and butter, and a whitish cream color is quite common.
Sliced and served with beer
Once the cheese is chilled and firm, cut it radially from the center like a cake. In Latvia it is typically eaten as a snack with light or dark beer. On rye bread it becomes a light meal, and a little honey softens the caraway aroma and tang so it tastes more like a treat. Since the aroma rises when you bite into a caraway seed, a reasonably thick slice tastes better than a thin shaving.
The midsummer night is short, and spending it by the bonfire until dawn is the Jāņi way. The cheese is the food you can pick up by hand through that long night, passed around with beer. Made at home, it does not have to be June; in Latvia too the cheese is now sold all year. If you want one more Baltic home-cooking dish, compare it with Estonian mulgikapsad, a stew of pork, sauerkraut, and barley from the same northern kitchen.
Frequently asked questions
Can I use cumin instead of caraway seeds?
You can, but it becomes a different dish. Caraway smells fresh and slightly sweet, while cumin is reminiscent of curry, and cumin will not produce the caraway aroma that defines Jāņu siers. Caraway seeds are available at import grocers or online.
Which is better, curd-style or smooth cottage cheese?
Either works. The smooth type blends into the milk faster and gives a smoother result. If you use the curd type, break it up well by hand before adding it to the milk, and allow a longer kneading time.
The mass won't come together and stays crumbly.
Common causes are too much whey left in the curds or a temperature that is too low. Keep it at 65–70°C over low heat and keep kneading, pressing against the side of the pot. If whey is coming out into the pot, strain it through cloth again and then return it to the pot.
What do I do with the whey?
1.5 L of milk yields a fair amount of whey. Once cooled it can be used in drinks, soups, or as the liquid in bread dough, but if you will not use it right away there is no need to force yourself to keep it.
How long does it keep?
Jāņu siers is an unaged fresh cheese and contains egg. Wrap it in plastic, refrigerate, and finish it soon. This article gives no storage days, because no reliable basis for a number of days could be confirmed.
Sources
- Official Journal of the European Union, "Publication of an application pursuant to Article 50(2)(b) of Regulation (EU) No 1151/2012 (2015/C 204/08): Product specification of a traditional speciality guaranteed 'Jāņu siers'," 20 June 2015. Accessed and checked 22 October 2026. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/665dab2516cf36f4d63ebd47/Product_spec_J%C4%81%C5%86u_siers.pdf
- Lauku ceļotājs (Latvian Country Tourism Association), "Jāņu siers (Jāņi cheese)." Accessed and checked 22 October 2026. https://www.celotajs.lv/c/brand/cheese/janusiers
- LSM (Latvian Public Broadcasting), "Traditional Midsummer cheese wins EU protection," 17 November 2015. Accessed and checked 22 October 2026. https://eng.lsm.lv/article/society/society/traditional-midsummer-cheese-wins-eu-protection.a155428/
- Wikipedia, "Jāņi cheese." Accessed and checked 22 October 2026. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J%C4%81%C5%86i_cheese
