Making Cheese at Home!

Making cheese at home might seem unneccesary, and a little too ambitious, but not only is it easy, it can be quite economical! Here is how to make delicious Mozzarella!

Here is what you need!

1 gallon of whole/homo milk
1 1/2t citric acid
1/4 tablet of rennet
Salt
Spices/flavorings
Thermometer.


Dissolve the citric acid in 1 cup of cold water, set aside.

Disolve the rennet in 1/4 cup of cold water, set aside.

Pour the gallon of milk into a large pot.

*Those of you who can buy a milk in a gallon jug are lucky. Here we can only get 2 liter cartons, and bags, equalling almost a gallon. I lack the finesse to open the bags without spilling. Luckily 4 liters is a little over a gallon and I usually end up right on.

Heat your milk to 85 degrees F

Stir in the Citric acid solution

The curds and whey will begin to seperate a bit at this point.




Heat to 100, and then add the rennet- Stir for a few seconds and turn off the heat.

The separation between curds and whey should be very apparent at this time.





The whey will look like a light green transluscent fluid, and the curds a bit like cottage cheese or ricotta.




Scoop out the curds and place in a microwave safe bowl. Remove as much whey as you can.



Microwave for 30 seconds, and pour off the addtional whey. Continue repeating this step until the cheese is 135f degrees and no more whey is coming off of the cheese.

Add your salt, and start to stretch and fold the cheese over on itself. You can also add flavourings at this point. I added some sundried tomatoes, fresh basil and dill to half of the batch.



Shape the cheese into a log and let it cool.

Slice some off, and enjoy. Try not to eat the whole thing in one sitting, you may get a stomachache... and yes, I speak from personal experience.




To store, wrap up and keep in the fridge.