Say cheese!

I've been wanting to try my hand at making mozzarella for a while now. I finally got around to ordering a kit from New England Cheesemakers last week and tried it out last night.

Yes, it's really easy. And reasonably fun. And only took half an hour or so.

The ingredients. My savvier readers will spot a potential problem immediately.

Ultra-pasteurized milk doesn't work. The higher heat destroys the proteinamajiggies that combine to form the stretchy texture. Luckily, I caught my mistake before I got much farther than this and went back to the grocery store for just plain pasteurized milk. I made a half recipe to try it out before delving into the world of buying a whole gallon of milk at the time. (Reading this over, I realize that sounds kind of funny, but unless I'm cooking with it, a half-gallon of milk will usually last me about two weeks since I only use it for coffee and the occasional bowl of cereal. Also, car-free living = mindful about heaviness of groceries.)

First, you dissolve part of a tablet of rennet (in the blister pack, lower left in the photo) in some water and set it aside. Then, dissolve some of the citric acid in some other water in a large pot. Add the milk.

Action shot!:

The milk and citric acid get heated to 88 degrees F, then the rennet is mixed in and the resulting mixture left to sit for 5-8 minutes. I used this time to make a cocktail and eat an apple.

At this point, the milk solids have begun clumping together:

I think I may have used less rennet than I should have. The directions said to cut the curds into 1" chunks to help with draining, but I didn't have enough solid material to cut up. Maybe it's just that I made a half batch? I lined a colander with cheesecloth (ha!) and drained as much liquid as I could. Apparently, you can use whey in any recipe that calls for buttermilk (which makes sense, since cheese and butter are both about getting the milkfat and sugars to clump together, while leaving the thin, sour liquid behind) and it's also good for houseplants.

Curds and whey, or, I don't think it was the spider Little Miss Muffet was running away from:

Now you microwave the curds, pour off more whey and knead the cheese until it cools down. Repeat this until the cheese has the consistency of taffy. Add salt sometime along here.

Sort of mid-knead (photographing all steps of a messy process by yourself is tough: the lament of the solo cheesemaker). You can see how much whey is still coming out.

And all done:

The verdict: this is some fairly good mozzarella. Certainly better than what I could get at the grocery store, but nowhere near as good as what I'm used to buying in Brooklyn. I think it has potential though. I'd give this batch a B-, but it wouldn't take much to bring the grade up. I definitely didn't add enough salt and it could have stood another heating/kneading cycle to improve the texture.

Comments

[orata]

Wow! That looks great-- thanks for posting about this. Can you use reduced-fat milk or will that mess up the cheese mojo too? I prefer reduced-fat mozzarella on pizza because it gets too oily for my taste when melted, but the full fat stuff is great raw, in caprese or whatnot.

[Martha]

Holy Cow! I've been reading a lot about cheese making lately (Little House on the Prairie for my daughter and Basic Country Skills for me) and now you've gone and done it. Making mozzarella seems like the perfect nyc apartment cheese. Having cheese pressed into molds sounds great, but not too practical w/ a small kitchen.

Good luck working towards an A+ cheese.

[Joan]

OK, now you've done it. I ordered the cheese kit. I need more hobbies.

[david]

wow. good job cheese lady.

[Gina]

Soap maker, cheese maker... lady, is there anything you cannot do?