{"id":33322,"date":"2014-10-30T18:03:51","date_gmt":"2014-10-30T22:03:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.uncommongoods.com\/?p=33322"},"modified":"2018-01-04T14:53:24","modified_gmt":"2018-01-04T19:53:24","slug":"gift-lab-tasty-homemade-cheese","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.uncommongoods.com\/blog\/2014\/gift-lab-tasty-homemade-cheese\/","title":{"rendered":"Gift Lab: How to Make Tasty Homemade Cheese"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Paul<\/a><\/p>\n

Product:<\/strong> Italian Cheesemaking Kit<\/a><\/p>\n

Research:<\/strong>
\nOne of my responsibilities here at UncommonGoods is to answer your questions when you want to know more about an item, and what better way than to actually give this a try and hopefully a taste as well!<\/p>\n

To prepare for this endeavor I\u2019ve checked out Mad Millie\u2019s YouTube channel<\/a> and watched her prepare and make her Mozzarella cheese. If there\u2019s one thing I love it would be cheese and Italian cooking. (OK, that’s two things. But two GREAT things!) In addition I\u2019ve managed to locate some non-homogenized whole milk, there\u2019s no question in my brief readings on Wikipedia<\/a> and the instructions that starting with the right milk is key.<\/p>\n

Hypothesis:<\/strong>
\nSurely fresh, homemade bread is better than store bought bread so I would hope that homemade cheese would be equally as satisfying.<\/p>\n

While I am a tad nervous about the results, I feel like the instructions are clear. Although I am super glad I watched the video, so I have a sense of what my goal should look like. I\u2019m generally good about following directions, although when I cook there are times when I can get experimental and deviate from the recipe to add a dash of this or, OOH that\u2019s a pretty color! I\u2019m just going to have to reign in the wild side and stick to the basics–this time around at least.<\/p>\n

I feel like the biggest challenges are the ones I can do little about. For those of you who don\u2019t live in New York, you may be surprised by the size of my kitchen; most surfaces are needed for storage so there\u2019s just a limited number of spots to do your mixing and cooking. Oh, and pardon our appearance while we\u2019re in the middle of renovations (at home)! That and I\u2019m concerned about the size pot to use. My current plan is to use our ancient (I think this is older than me) pasta pot.<\/p>\n

Experiment:<\/strong>
\nWell I have everything laid out, and why yes those ARE our Nesting Prep Bowls<\/a> back there! The instructions say to sterilize your equipment that will handle the milk for 5 minutes. The challenge will be the colander, so let\u2019s get a bunch of pots a boiling. It\u2019s at this point where I wonder why I decided to do this in a heat wave and without air conditioning. My large pot isn\u2019t making it to a boil, and alas, the lid is lost somewhere in a pile of tools. So, I give it a good 10 minutes rather than 5. Thankfully my colander in the smaller pot has reached a boil as that is my greatest concern. I prepare my ingredients, but I don\u2019t see when I add the salt!<\/p>\n

\"1
\n\"Cheese<\/a><\/p>\n

The recipe calls for a full gallon of milk, but my local whole foods only sold the milk in half gallons. And here\u2019s where I have my first tip: Shake the milk before pouring it into the pot. I left a lot of good tasty stuff in the bottle. I decided to use the same smaller pot that was already in action, so it\u2019s already warm and we\u2019re just heating the milk up to just under my current room temperature. (Ouch! The thermometer is reading 103, and while the pot is hot from boiling the room temperature is in the ’90s.) And here\u2019s my next mistake. I can only fit a half gallon of milk into this pot! It\u2019s too late to stop going now, so I\u2019ll just have to adjust on the fly.<\/p>\n

\"Making<\/a>
\n\"Milk<\/p>\n

I squeeze in the calcium chloride. With the stopper it\u2019s not too hard to simply measure half and then the citric acid and decide to add a tablespoon of salt. I\u2019d already mixed in the citric acid to let it dissolve as if I was going to do a gallon batch, so I have to guestimate how much to pour in. I choose to use more than half as I feel it\u2019s likely that it\u2019s not completely mixed. Because of the heat the mix is at the required temperature faster than I expected and before I can really get everything prepared.<\/p>\n

\"Hot<\/p>\n

I quickly turn off the heat and it\u2019s time to add the Rennet tablet. It hasn\u2019t really dissolved, but I hope it should in the milk. I stir it in and cover the milk and set my timer for 25 minutes. After 20 minutes of refuge in air conditioning, I\u2019m back in the kitchen and re-reading the instructions. OH NO! You add the salt in the very last step<\/em>. So needless to say, I\u2019m very nervous at this point and a bit frustrated at myself.<\/p>\n

\"Ice<\/p>\n

I set up the ice water and I am trying to get the temperature right for the hot water. I started with warm water, from when I was boiling (rather, trying to boil) my tools to sterilize them and I decide to heat a kettle with boiling water and try to get the temperature right. I end up with water that’s just 140 degrees rather than 158, but I go with it. I check on the cheese and it looks like it\u2019s firmed up to me.<\/p>\n

My knife goes in and clearly separates the curds. I slice in the cubes and am a bit nervous. Did I allow enough time for the curds to set? It really just seems like a thin skin of what will become cheese. Once I begin to reheat the mixture and gently stir, the answer soon becomes clear. No. I didn\u2019t. I think the key is to really watch the video. I recognized it wasn\u2019t quite the same. This is definitely a case of being close enough is not going to cut the cheese<\/em> so to speak.<\/p>\n

\"Cheesemaking<\/a><\/p>\n

I decide to forge on. Once the curds have reached the warmer temperature I begin to scoop the curds into the cheese cloth and colander. As the curds are loose this takes a long long time and I was not able to maintain the temperature. The recipe calls for letting the curds drain for 5 minutes but the process of just getting them out of the pot takes closer to 15 minutes.<\/p>\n

\"Scooping<\/a><\/p>\n

A little forlorn, I begin to scoop up globs of curd and rest them in hot water briefly. They quickly begin to separate, so I simply start to work them quickly and it\u2019s readily apparent that I do not have mozzarella cheese. I still give them a dunk in the ice water, though, and they do hold up better than I expected.<\/p>\n

\"Squeeze<\/p>\n

\"It's<\/p>\n

At the end of this experiment it appears that while I failed to make mozzarella I did end up with some REALLY<\/strong> tasty Ricotta cheese.<\/p>\n

So tomorrow once the kitchen is once again clean and not quite as hot it will be time to make some lasagna!<\/p>\n

Conclusion:<\/strong>
\nWhen we did make lasagna with my homemade ricotta, it was AMAZING!<\/p>\n

I clearly did not make this easy for myself, and as much as I tried to read and prepare myself, I should have started with the goal of making the simpler recipe for the first time around.<\/p>\n

I would emphasize that it is a lot of work to make cheese at home, but that the work has much more to do with the preparation and the clean up rather than the cheesemaking itself. I think it would help to have greater counter space and I\u2019m curious what would of happened if I\u2019d had the larger pot to handle the milk.<\/p>\n

I WILL<\/strong> make mozzarella, although not this week. Next time I\u2019m going to do a little more research so I can be confident in the ratio of ingredients I\u2019m going to use. I\u2019m also going to have to have a pot of boiling water on hand so that I can properly prepare my curds and they can be stretched into mozzarella. And now that I know the drill, I won’t add the salt until the end! I\u2019m very hopeful that with this adjustment I will be successful.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Customer Service Team Lead Paul is a big fan of Italian cooking, so he’s giving the Italian Cheese Making Kit a try! Will his homemade Ricotta make a lasagna dinner even more delicious?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":123,"featured_media":33359,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[741],"tags":[1444,148,137,3,66],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uncommongoods.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33322"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uncommongoods.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uncommongoods.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uncommongoods.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/123"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uncommongoods.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33322"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.uncommongoods.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33322\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":64742,"href":"https:\/\/www.uncommongoods.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33322\/revisions\/64742"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uncommongoods.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33359"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uncommongoods.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33322"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uncommongoods.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33322"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uncommongoods.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33322"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}