Making our own cheese

Yes, making our own cheese is right. Thanks, Lyn, for the guest post!

When K was recently in Seattle for a visit (which mostly turned into a food tour of the area), we spent some time at the Beecher Handmade Cheese shop and factory in Seattle. By spent some time there I mean we sat for almost an hour and a half watching the entire process and taking pictures from behind the glass. Needless to say we were very excited to find do-it-yourself kits were available. We ran out of time before K left, so I gave it a go (with some assistance from my folks).

The kit provided everything we needed (except the milk), but all of these ingredients are easily available in most grocery stores. They do recommend that you use full-fat milk (I did not read the instructions in advance and we ended up with about 1.5-2pints of full milk and the remainder of 1%, but it tasted just fine! It is however, very important to use pasteurized (and not ultra-pasteurized) milk.

To start, mix 1/4 of a rennet tablet into 1 cup of cool, chlorine free water. Mix 1.5teaspoons into a second (separate) cup of cool, chlorine free water. Make sure to remember which cup contains which ingredient, I had to redo this step for that reason… It is advisable to use plastic or wooden utensils as the citric acid and rennet with negatively react with aluminium and cast iron. [Side note: Rennet is regularly available in Grocery stores. It is best to store your Rennet in the freezer, this way it can stay fresh for up to 5 years, as opposed to 6-8 months if stored in the kitchen cupboard.]

Pour 1 gallon of full-cream, pasteurized milk into a large (at least 6 quarts) pot. Pour in the citric acid and water solution and mix well. Heat the milk & citric acid mixture, stirring to prevent scorching on the bottom of the post. Place the thermometer in the pot and heat the mixture to 90F.
[Side note: ensure that the thermometer tip is suspended in the liquid and not touching the bottom of the pot or you will not get an accurate reading!]

Once the mixture reaches 90F, add in the rennet with a ‘gentle up-down motion,’ I did not read this bit and continued to stir in a circular fashion and our cheese turned out fine, so I don’t think its too much of an issues! The solution need to heat to 105F, which is when you should start to see curds pulling away from the whey. We had this start to happy at about 101F. Keep stirring for about a minute or so and then remove the the pot from the heat.

If you do not see curds by 105F, continue heating to 110F, but do not go higher than this! If at 110F you do not see any curds, remove the pot from heat and let it settle for 15-45 minutes until there is coagulation. If it simply never coagulates then you probably have ultra-pasteurized milk.

Take a large slotted spoon and spoon the curds from the pot into a plastic bowl, trying to drain as much of the whey before moving them as possible.

For the next step I chose to use the microwave method because it was easier and the dinner deadline was rapidly approaching (we used the mozzarella on our Sunday night pizza) and my dad is rather grouchy when he doesn’t get dinner at the specified time! (True story 😉 – K )

For the microwave method: heat the bowl for 1 minute (we shortened this to 45sec because we have a very powerful microwave, as you use your microwave the most you’ll know best!)

Remove the bowl and gently fold the curds over, distributing the heat. Drain off any excess whey, but don’t try to squeeze it out of the cheese!

Heat the bowl for another 30sec. Drain any remaining whey and try to stretch the curd. It must be 135F to properly do this. Now, as you can imagine from the given temperature, the cheese is really, really hot! I continued to use the mixing spoon to gently fold the cheese over and is became stickier to stretch it over on itself. If your cheese is not quite at this stage, you can give it another 30sec in the microwave.

Now, its time to add the cheese salt (you can also use coarse sea salt, kosher salt, whatever strikes your fancy! As well as any herbs you think might go nicely). Once you’ve added the salt (or herbs) continue to gently fold/knead the cheese to properly mix it all together. We used 1tsp of cheese salt, I would recommend maybe a bit more than that, but I like things to be quite salty.

And voila! You’re done. Your cheese should be quite firm now, shape it into a shape (traditional ball or log or something else whacky) and let it cool. Its best to eat your cheese as soon as possible, but it will keep for up to a week in the fridge. We used ours immediately on the pizza and it was really great! It worked out well that it wasn’t too salty, as the olives on the pizza were quite salty. Very complimentary.

Note: for this type of mozzarella do not store it in water or liquid of any kind.

So next time you make pizza, make your own mozzarella!