Last Friday we decided we were going to learn to make our own cheese. This is part of what I hope will be kind of a series of learning experiments. They taught me how to make jam a few months ago when we had a bunch of strawberries on hand. This time cheese! We were inspired by a few passages in Animal, Vegetable, Miracle that talk about cheesemaking. We followed Barbara Kingsolver's advice and got a cheesemaking kit from cheesemaking.com, gathered our ingredients and got to work.
The cheesemaking kit that made things relatively simple. There was a booklet (with hilarious illustrations, like the goat in a graduation cap & gown) with recipes. We chose 30 minute mozzarella. It seemed straightforward enough. You start with a gallon of milk, add some citric acid and some rennet (a cheesemaking enzyme), separate curds from whey and voila! Cheese! So, we begin! Here we are warming the milk to a cozy 90 degrees. So far so good!
In this photo, the curds are starting to separate from the whey. We were instructed to slice the top curd into little cubes. (Insert your own "cut the cheese" joke here).
Now the mixture is sort of like soupy, lumpy yogurt. Are we really going to get cheese from this stuff? At this point, I have to admit I was having my doubts. Also, might I add, this is the point where the cheese-to-be started smelling less than appetizing.
In this photo the cheese had progressed to a new level. See what it looks like? It smells the same way.
Here the cheese has reached the point where we separated out the curds with a slotted spoon. It's ready for the next phase! We poured most of the mixture through some cheesecloth (who knew?) to separate everything. I wasn't sorry to see the whey go down the drain. One friend pointed out that some folks like to use whey when they make pizza dough. She even initially was trying to save it. But there was quite a bit of whey - more than we initially thought. So she let most of it go down the drain. We might save it next time.
After separating the curds, we had to heat them in the microwave a couple times, and then pull them like taffy. The recipe book suggested wearing rubber gloves to protect you from the heat. The ones we wore (I'm not sure if these came in the kit or not) were more like surgical gloves and didn't protect us from the heat at all. And, unfortunately, using the gloves made our cheese taste like latex. Disappointing.
Here is the finished product - our cheese blob. It was so cool seeing how it changed from lumpy curds to smooth, shiny cheese.
After this point, we rolled them into string cheese type logs, wrapped them in plastic wrap, and chilled them in a bowl of ice water. This helped the cheese set up nicely.
Here, Cassie tries the finished product. She looks happy, but after we took this photo she stated rather adamantly that she would not eat the latex flavored cheese and threw hers away. Can't say I blame her.
So, for our first try, I think it went rather well. I mean, other than the fact the cheese wasn't exactly palatable. It was still cool to go through the process and see everything come together! We'll definitely try it again sometime in the near future.This experiment with cheese also made me think of the times in the past when I made my own yogurt. I'd read about how to do it in a magazine or book, though I can't really remember which one. It's a fairly simple process, and I used a crock pot set on "warm" to keep the yogurt at a good temperature while it did its thing. It's been a long time since I've made some, but I think I'll have to start again. Baby steps toward sustainability and self-sufficiency!
Now if only I could get my garden started...
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