Homemade Cheese!!!

Making my own cheese Works For Me!!

Have you ever made your own cheese? I bet you would if you knew how easy it was and I bet you’d jump for joy if you knew it only took 30 minutes!

Over a year ago hubby urged me to find the perfect pizza crust. Many, many attempts later, I’ve found one that we deem perfect, and we eat pizza pretty much weekly now. But about a month ago, he said, “hey honey, since we make our own dough and our own sauce, I think we should make our own cheese too.” I just laughed, and said, “okay honey, you get right on that.”

And he did.

A week later, he had this shipped to the house:

You can buy this here. It costs 25 dollars and you can make 30 batches with it! This kit makes mozzarella and ricotta. The company has a variety of kits though and you can get one for cream cheese, sour cream, and aged cheeses too!  Once you have the kit, all you need to pick up is a gallon of milk and seriously good water. We have a reverse osmosis system, but if you aren’t sure about your water you might want to pick some up, the water can’t have any chlorine in it or this won’t turn out well at all!!

Anyway, I saw the kit, but I was still skeptical… so I told hubby that this was his little project. And he proceeded to read through the directions, go buy a gallon of milk, and then he made cheese. Hubby made cheese (all by himself!!)! From the time he opened the box until the finished product was around an hour. I was in SHOCK! And let me tell you, it is GOOD. No, it’s better than good, if you make it you have to do a blind taste test between it and some store brand mozzarella and you will be able to tell the difference in a huge, MAJOR way. Did I say it was good? YUM!!!

We made this last night to go on top of our pizza, I took a lot of pictures, so sit back and enjoy the cheesemaking process!

Here is what is in the kit:

Cheese salt, citric acid, rennet tabs, directions, thermometer, and a cheesecloth (not pictured because I can’t find it!)

First step:

Divide a rennet tab into 4 pieces, take one piece and dissolve it in 1/4 cup of water, wrap the other three pieces up and put it, along with the rest of the tabs back in the freezer (they store for a very very long time).

Next:

Dissolve 1 1/2 teaspoons of citric acid into one cup water.

Next, get a pot out (it needs to be stainless steel or non-aluminum or non-cast iron) and pour your milk in (make sure you get the right kind - it can't be "ultra-pasteurized"):

The heat doesn't need to be on yet. While you are pouring the milk in you will also be stirring in the citric acid vigorously. Once it's all mixed up you turn the heat on and keep stirring while you monitor the temperature, you want to get it to 90 degrees:

Once it's hit 90, remove it from heat and stir in the rennet mixture for about 30 seconds, using what the book calls an "up and down motion" and then cover it:

Now it needs to sit for 5 minutes. During this time the curd will form, if after the 5 minutes it doesn't look very hard or still looks too milky it's okay to let it set a few more minutes, we ended up letting it sit for around 7 minutes total.

Next, it is time to cut the curd. You'll need a long knife that will reach the bottom of your pot. Slice it into a checkerboard style:

Then place the pot back on the burner and turn the heat back on. Slowly move the curds around while heating it up to 105 degrees:

Here is a close up of what it looks like at this stage:

Once you hit 105 turn the heat off and take it off the burner and continue stirring for 2-5 minutes. The book says the longer you stir the firmer your cheese and I wanted it to be pretty firm so I went for the whole 5 minutes.

Then you will need to separate the curd from the whey. We do this by scooping out the big pieces with a slotted spoon:

And then placing it in a strainer with what should have/could have been a cheesecloth to keep the small curds from slipping away, instead I used my microwave cover because it is a very fine mesh and it worked just fine:

Once you've got all the big pieces out, dump the rest of what's left in and let it drain off:

You may need to use your hands to help drain it off, just get as much of the whey out as you can and then transfer to a microwave safe bowl:

There is still some whey so I used my hand to gently press the cheese to drain it a little more.

Now I believe the instructions say that gloves are optional. They are not optional. You will seriously hurt your hands if you don't use them, so get yourself some gloves to work with the cheese in these last few steps.

Pop the bowl in the microwave for 1 minute, take it out and using gloves drain off more of the whey. Then you are going to add your salt. We added a full TBS but I will probably cut that in half next time:

Fold the salt into the curds and form it into a ball. Pop it into the microwave for another 30 seconds. Drain it again and the take it's temperature, it needs to be 135 degrees to stretch it. Ours needed about 10 more seconds.

Once it's reached 135 you are going to stretch it! This is the fun (but incredibly hot) part!

The book says that the more you play with it the firmer it gets, so I kept playing with it:

YUM, I started taking bites at around this stage:

Then form it into whatever shape you want! Cheese sticks, mini balls, a large ball, etc. Here is our finished cheese:

And here I am stealing yet another piece (it's a wonder any was left for the pizza!):

And as a little tease for the pizza dough recipe I will be posting soon, here it is on our buffalo chicken pizza later that night:

Yummy!!

All in all, this is the best mozzerella cheese I've ever had and I'm not just saying that because I made it! It really is simple to do and only takes 30 minutes, so why don't you ask for a kit for Christmas and make it for yourself!?!? If you want to see other ideas on things you can do yourself, check out A Soft Place to Land for DIY day!!

Love and Luck to you,

The Packet Queen