Recently Melissa and I took the foray into cheese making. She bought a cheese making kit for mozzarella, I found some non-ultra pasteurized milk, and away we went! The process seemed simple enough: take milk, heat it, add rennet and citric acid, knead, and voila! cheese.
Here is our kit (note the adorable cows!)
So you start with some milk. Make sure it’s not ultra-pasteurized. This, as it turns out, is hard to do because dairies aren’t required to label their milk. Luckily, Ralph’s brand turned out to be just pasteurized.
You’ll be using citric acid and rennet to help the cheese form. Here, take your rennet tablet and break it into fours.
Add it to some water (the directions, obviously, are more through with amounts and the like.)
You’re going to need citric acid in some water, too.
The cheesemaking kit comes with a thermometer, so you can see what you’re doing. Around 80 degrees, you’ll need to start adding your rennet and citric acid.
And then, my friends, magic happens.
Here, my friends, the curds start to form! What joy! The first steps of curds, whey, and cheese! This led us to wonder why Miss Muffet was eating curds and whey, if it was hot, and why you’d ever want to eat that in the first place. Unless it was more curd, less whey, something like cottage cheese. But that’s another story, I suppose.
So after your curds and whey have separated, you have to get rid of the whey, leaving yourself with the curds. Hindsight says to lay cheesecloth down here so you don’t lose too much curd, but lose more whey.
Look at that curd! Amazing! Delicious! I think this is the step we added salt — don’t add too little, you want it to be delicious!
The next step is to stretch it. I added this photo merely to bring attention to my fingers — it was QUITE hot, this cheese!
This is the stretching stage. I think you’ll note my mozzarella is not stretching quite well — I think this was from over handling. We’ll have to try again and get back to you!
Here is our cheese, when all was said and done.
It cut quite nicely, and looked quite promising, but wasn’t the most delicious mozzarella I’ve ever had. Luckily, the kit makes four pounds, so we have three more chances to perfect!
Have you ever made cheese before? How did you do it? Did you use a kit? We’ll have to make this again and figure out what we’re doing wrong, and we’ll be sure to report back. I must say reading the Roaring Brook’s website was quite helpful – I’d suggest doing that before you start!
Next venture: making our own yogurt. Stay tuned!
[addtoany] Yum