Here are #4 and I, ready for our latest adventure! (Yes, he is totally zonked out strapped to my back). Also, if you can read time backward, you will notice that it is 10:55, and you may notice pajama clad #3 squatting in the corner, watching TV. Ya can't do it all.
So, those of you who try to eat organically have no doubt noticed that while organic milk is widely available and not too terribly expensive, dairy products made from organic milk can be very difficult to find and are sometimes prohibitively expensive. Well, some good friends of mine gave me a cheesemaking kit for Christmas, so today I am going to find out just how hard it is to make my own organic cheese.
I will be using Ricki's Cheesemaking Kit, which can be purchased here: http://www.cheesemaking.com/store/c/1-Kits.html. It comes with everything but the milk (okay, and the 2 pots, bowl, wooden spoon, and fine mesh colander). The instructions expressly state that ultra-pasteurized milk will not work for cheesemaking. Well. It certainly isn't hard to find regular pasteurized milk, and it certainly isn't hard to find ultra-pasteurized organic milk... but it turns out that nearly all the organic milk I could find was ultra-pasteurized. Finally, at the third store I went to (Fred Meyer), I found Organic Valley brand milk, which is just regular-ole-pasteurized. I got whole milk, I mistrust anything low fat.
Alright, the instructions were pretty easy to follow, dissolve rennet tablet in water, heat citric acid, water & milk... I followed them to a T. (You can find her directions here: http://www.cheesemaking.com/howtomakemozzarellacheese.html) An issue came up at the curd stage though. My curds set up, but not nearly as well as they should have. The next time I make it (because I will totally do it again), I will definitely let it set up longer if I'm questioning the readiness at all. Mine ended up resembling ricotta at this stage, rather than having a nice defined curd. I believe this was an issue of following the timing and temperatures rather than the descriptions of appearance given in the instructions.
Anyhow, at this point I was supposed to ladle the curds into a sieve to separate from the whey. My curds were much too small to mess with all that. I just slowly (and carefully) poured my curds and whey through a fine mesh strainer.
Aww, isn't it cute! From here, the instructions had you decide whether to use a hot water bath or microwave method to finish up the cheese. Short rant- I don't know why in the heck a person would go through all of this just to destroy any nutritional value with the microwave.... so I chose the water bath method.
Easy peasy. Seriously easy peasy. Heat a pot of water to 185 degrees. Dunk colander. When the cheese comes together & gets all stringy you get to play with it and stretch it out!
Here is what I had in the end: 12 ounces of beautiful organic fresh mozzarella cheese. I was supposed to have 16 ounces, but my theory is that by not letting the curd set up enough, I poured off those extra four ounces with the whey. All in all though, not bad for a first try. It took me about an hour from start to finish, and I did the dishes in that time as well. So $5 and around an hour of your time for a pound of organic cheese. Pretty swell if you ask me.
Since it also happened to be Valentine's day....
I thought a few heart-shaped pizzas were in order!
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