what are the main ingredients of cheese?

Answer 1

Milk and bacteria and enzymes. Different cheese are made with different types of milk and the desired cheese changes with the amount of time it ages and the way the enzymes and bacteria are added to the milk product for proper reaction. Common practice is the addition of salt and flavoring and alot of the cheese we see in common grocery stores have coloring added to them. If you can find a good cheese shop try a few you are not familar with and you will be amazed by the range of flavor from what seems to be such a simple product.

Answer 2

The following recipe represents the ultimate in simplicity in cheese making. It will produce a delicious cottage cheese that resembles ricotta and is excellent fresh or used in cooking Italian dishes such as lasagna. We recommend that beginners start with a cottage cheese to get the feel for the basics and for the instant gratification of being able to enjoy the product immediately.

Ingredients:

1 gallon 2% milk
1/2 cup vinegar
1 tsp salt

1. Heat the milk to 190ºF. You will need a thermometer for other cheeses but you can get by here turning off the heat just before the milk begins to boil.

2. Add the vinegar and allow the mixture to cool.

3. When cool, pour the mixture, (which now consists of curds and whey as in Miss Muffet food) into a colander and drain off the whey.

4. Pour the curds into a bowl and sprinkle on the salt and mix well. You may wish to use less salt or more. It is simply a matter of taste which is the next step. You can add a little cream for a silky texture.

COMMENTS:
What we have just made is really cheese but short circuits the process in several ways. The vinegar provides the acid that causes the milk to curdle and produces the acid flavor. The traditional method of producing the acid is to use a culture of acid producing bacteria. This is more complicated and takes longer but as it is alive, the cheese will continue to improve in flavor with age. This is of little consequence in a cheese made for immediate consumption. More on cultures later.

We have also made small curd cottage cheese because we left out another ingredient called rennet. This is an enzyme the produces a harder curd. It was originally made from calf stomachs but is now synthesized and available in liquid or tablet form. I believe the cottage cheese sold in supermarkets as large and small curd is a fiction because the ingredients on the label for the two products are exactly the same. More on rennet later.

Because both the bacteria and rennet can be destroyed by temperature, the traditional process requires several ripening steps at lower temperatures and a curd cooking step at a higher temperature. Because vinegar is inactive, we went immediately to the cooking stage and saved a lot of time.

Finally, the difference between soft cheese and hard cheese is that the latter requires pressing the drained curds in a cheese press, drying the pressed cheese and then aging for several months.

Answer 3

As far as most people are concerned, milk is a wonderul food coming from cow's milk.

The smal print has to go like this. Various other kinds of milk, can be, and are, used - on a small scale.

To turn the milk into cheese, various other ingredients are used. These include starter culture, natural acids etc. Also, distinctive flavours can be imparted to the cheese by the addition of herbs, spices etc and by varying the time for which the mixture is heated or by the rate at which it is all allowed to cool.

To stick to ingredients, however, the controversial one is RENNET. This is what vegetarians are uncomfortable with.

Rennet used to come only from the intestines of slaughtered cattle. Now, owing to

Answer 4

Cheese can not really be said to have been "invented". This delicious food must have resulted from the simple observation that milk left in a container ends up by coagulating, even more if it is hot. People living in areas where the climate changed seasonally would also have noticed the effect of temperature on this process: in warmer weather the milk would curdle faster than in the cold. This might be considered the first technological cheesemaking discovery.

Answer 5

Depends on what kind but...

Cheese is a dairy foodstuff made from the curdled milk of various animals, most frequently cows, but often goats, sheep, and water buffalo.

Some cheeses are made with the addition of herbs and spices. In some locations as a response to the loss of diversity in mass-produced cheeses, a cottage industry has grown up around home cheesemaking.

Answer 6

mamalian milk of any sort
hard cheese like chedar uses rennet, which are traditionally from calves stomachs or genetically modified organisms.
various flavourings and wrappings

time and care

Answer 7

Here's how to make cheese....including ingredients and how-to.

http://www.farmersmarketonline.com/howto3.htm

Answer 8

Milk and mold

Answer 9

Milk, starter culture and or natural acids, and rennet.
http://www.leeners.com/cheesehow2.html

Answer 10

milk