At Christmas Nikole and Brad gave me a cheese making kit. It came is a cute box that held instructions, three rennet tablets and two little bags, one with citric acid and one with cheese salt. It also contained a thermometer and some cheese cloth.
The only ingredient not provide in the kit in order to make a batch of homemade mozzarella was a gallon of whole milk. There is enough of the kit ingredients to make 10 batches. A gallon of milk will make one pound of cheese.
The whole process went pretty quickly. First we put all of the equipment we would be using in boiling water to sterilize. We used a stainless kettle for sterilizing and for the actual cheese making as cast iron and aluminum are reactive and not recommended. The rennet tablet was cut into quarters and one quarter was dissolved in water. The citric acid was also dissolved in water. The gallon of milk was placed in the pan and we followed the instructions, adding the two dissolved ingredients when instructed and heating the mixture to the correct temperature.
The milk starts to form curds and then the curds are separated from the whey. The curds are microwaved to further raise the temperature and remove any additional whey. Then the salt is added. Our final cheese:
We ate our cheese on homemade baguette slices that we dipped first in basil infused olive oil and balsamic vinegar. It was very tasty. It will be great this summer with tomatoes and basil from the garden as insalata caprese or bruschetta. I cannot wait. .
I think that if I were going to make cheese, I would start with a kit like this. It seems like it's just my speed! Sounds delish! :)
ReplyDeleteIt was fun and the cheese was good. I think next time we will try the other method where the cheese is stretched instead of microwaved and see how that goes.
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