Adventures in Cheesemaking
Posted on March 14, 2010 - Filed Under Food, Simple Life | 11 Comments
Cheese in Guatemala is expensive, particularly the aged stuff. You can get fresh cheese pretty cheap, but nothing of quality. So, yesterday and today, I’ve been trying my hand at cheesemaking, mozzarella, in particular. Here’s how you can make your own, if you’re interested. I followed the recipe here.
I started with 4 liters of fresh milk that was partially skimmed. To speed up the acidity, which is vital in mozzarella and is what makes it stretchy, I put in 1 1/4 tsp. of citric acid (acido citrico in Spanish, available in Farmacia La Roca by Burger King).
Then I heated it to 32° and then added about 1/4 c. fresh yogurt and let it sit for an hour to cool. Then I added half a tablet of rennet (you’re only supposed to use 1/4 tablet, but I was anxious about it working) to about 2 tablespoons of water and stirred it into the cultured milk.
This is what it looked like after about 20 minutes.
You want the curds to give a “clean break” which looks like this . . . a nice split rather than spreading over your finger.
I cut the curd. It was WAY harder than it sounded. For mozzarella, you need pieces that are fairly small, about half an inch. The curd spun and slipped though as I was cutting and was a real pain to cut.
You cut into strips, then cut across and finally, lift with a clean hand and cut everything into cubes. The water gets quite murky and it’s hard to see so you have to actually lift the curds out to cut them. Here’s what they look like at this point.
Pretty squooshy! These are very delicate at this point and will break apart easily, so you have to let them sit for a bit. Five minutes later, they look like this:
At this point, you have to keep stirring the curds because they try to stick back together. I ended up stirring about every 5-10 min for the first 30 min, then I let them sit and mat up on the bottom of the pot, as the recipe said. You also need to keep the milk at 32° or so, which wasn’t hard, I just turned on the stove low a couple of times.
The heat helps the curds expel the whey and they tighten up even more, like so:
The curds get dumped into cheesecloth, but since I didn’t have any, I used a cloth napkin that I had on hand.
Gather up the corners and hang it from a doorknob with a bowl under it to catch the whey.
The recipe says to let it hang for 4 hours, I took it down after 2 because it was getting in my way and wasn’t dripping at all anymore.
Since it was late and the mozzarella needed to develop a little more acidity, I left it in the fridge overnight and the next day, chopped it into small cubes. Looks like cheese already, huh?
This cheese already tasted pretty good, with a little tang that the previous day’s curd really lacked.
I heated water to almost boiling, added a handful of salt and dumped the cubes in.
I checked it frequently to see if the curds were soft. They need to be soft all the way through without being totally melted.
Here the curd was just starting to soften.
And then . . . I thought I’d ruined the whole thing! I scooped the curds out and they ended up melting even more just from their own heat!
Thankfully, it was just right. So all I had to do was stretch the curds. I dipped them back into the water when the strands started to break a bit.
Sorry, didn’t get any decent pics of the stretching, since I was taking my own photos!
Finally, I let the cheese sit in hot water for a few seconds to really get soft, then pressed it into this container.
An hour in the fridge and it looked like real cheese! Tasted like it, too!
Comments
11 Responses to “Adventures in Cheesemaking”
Talk to Me, People!
I am very impressed! I would have never thought to make my own cheese. I will have to give it a try. What type of yogurt and milk did you use? What is rennet and where did you find it? Did you find that it was a cost savings to make the cheese as opposed to purchasing it? With the rising prices of everything, this may be the way to go! Great post!
I’m in awe that you made cheese!! And you found the time and patience to do it. Well done. Not sure if I’ll ever make my own but at least I know how to now. LOL
That is so cool! You are so talented. I totally would have butchered that project, lol. So, that ball is fresh mozzarella? The final product looks more like the mozzarella at the supermarket, while the ball looks like the fresh stuff that comes packaged in liquid.
You are my hero! here I sit trying to pick my jaw from the floor you are making cheese!! its amazing..I would love to give this a try!
Love the last picture looks so perfect!
I also would like to know what rennet is and where can you get it in Guate
Thank you!
-Nat
The ball was unprocessed . . . I hadn’t cooked it yet, so technically it wasn’t mozzarella yet. In the end, when I molded it, you could easily just roll it into a ball and store in water.
Rennet is called “cuajo”, it’s extracted from the 4th stomach of sheep, goats and cows and is available in any pharmacy in Guatemala. It comes in little tablets that you break into four bits. Each tablet sets 50 liters of milk.
The yogurt that I used was just plain yogurt from Doña Luisa. It works well as a starter for a number of different cheeses.
The milk (fresh cow’s milk) cost Q28, the rennet was actually given to me, but costs less than Q1 per tablet. The yogurt was also gifted, but you could keep your own starter on hand and not pay anything. I’m actually not sure how much mozzarella costs in the store, because I haven’t bought it a very long time! I know cheddar is getting close to Q100 a pound and it doesn’t even taste right . . . that’s my next project!
Great post Genesis, I think we pay about 50Q a pound for mozzarella at PriceSmart. We also buy cheddar there, 2lbs is 65Q, a lot better quality (it tastes like cheddar) and almost half the price from stores in Antigua.
Great job! What a fascinating kitchen experiment
Oh Genesis…this is amazing. I have a kit that my brother in law gave me this summer, to make mozzerella. I haven’t had a chance to try it (he makes all kinds of cheeses, he says the hardest part is letting them age). Your looks amazing and I bet would be yummy on some tomatoes with some crusty bread. You are really amazing. Wish you lived nearby, so you could teach me a few things.
xoxo
Kimmie
mama to 8
one homemade and 6 1/2 adopted
That was very impressive Gen… One quick question, how much cheese did you get out of the 4 litres of milk? From the pictures, it looks to be about 8oz, am i correct? Thanks for your experiment and your response.
Actually, it was probably closer to a pound, Ned. I didn’t weigh it, but in size, it was equivalent to about a 1 lb. block.