Food Werx, Vol 4 - Cheese!

Bring in the cheese!

So I have been having fun

experimenting with milk and milk

products. But I am out of raw milk. I saw a video on YouTube showing a

simple way to make a simple cheese and it seemed like a good idea to try.

A few notes - even really good milk, like Oberweis, may not work. Oberweis supposedly does a variation of ultra-pasteurization, the difference being in regular pasteurization, the milk is heated to 161F for 15-20 seconds, where as the UHP is 275F for a minimum of 1 second. This pretty much destroys any chance for you to use the milk to make any kind

of cheese, according to the various 'make cheese at home' gurus. So, find a good milk and use it!

I used Kilgus' Non-homogenized milk. This is our regular milk (other than the raw milk we just got access to a few weeks ago.) You gotta shake it to mix in the cream that floats to the top, and it tastes sssoooo good.

O.k, off on our adventure!

I worked with a half gallon of milk.

So, you scald the milk, which is heat it on medium until it reaches 170F. This can be seen visually by the bubbles starting to ring the edge of your cook pot. At this point you remove the pot from the heat, and add in a cup of buttermilk and then 4 tablespoons of lemon juice. This acts as the separator, curdling the milk and removing the whey. Let the milk sit for 20 minutes while the acids from the juice do their thing, and then skim the curds out of the milk. Reserve the whey if you want, it is good to make pancakes, or in place of water in just about anything. Maybe for risotto.... hhhmmm....

Gently skim the curds out into a

cheese cloth covered colander, either

putting the colander in a larger pot to save the rest of the whey, or let it drain down the sink if you don't want to keep it. Then gather the cheese cloth into a tight bunch, compressing it and squeezing the curds together.

Tie the top with a string, and then

hang the curds so they can drain the last of the whey and moisture out.

Let them hang for about 30 minutes or a bit longer, and then peel open the cheese cloth. Voila, there is your cheese!

It is really great spread on fresh toasted bread, and I am NOT a bread guy (anymore.)

This was really simple to make, requires no special tools (even the temp you can eyeball by watching the edge of the milk for the bubbles to gather,) and you could use a clean dish towel in place of the cheese cloth. I guess maybe the string could be a special tool. Depends on how well you stock your kitchen!

We pretty much devoured the cheese with dinner. It has a very soft taste, nothing strong at all.

You can make this with 2%, or even skim milk if you wanted. Takes under an hour start to finish, including heating the milk. Can it get any better?

Cheers!

Scott