Have you ever made homemade cheese?

Question

Has anyone ever attempted to make their own cheese before?
Was if difficult, was it worth it, would you do it again? Was it good? are the curds good?
I've been searching on how to do it, and was just wondering. I may not be able to find the junket packets here though.. any sugestions for a sub?

Cheese here is about $10 a lb for anything worth eating. Thats for an aged chedder, the prices go up from there.

Answer 1

I have made mozzarella before, but I bought the curds to do it.

It's pretty easy, and I think it's really fun. It's cool if you do it at dinner parties cause then people think you're AMAZING when all you did was stretch out some curds. :P

You can make different shapes out of it... little balls, you can flatten it and stuff it, you can make ropes and braid it, you can make small ones (called boccaccini) and marinate them in olive oil and herbs... I'm sure there's other stuff you can do but that's what I've done.

As far as making anything else... it's a pretty labor intensive process, so I wouldn't try to make anything else. I just buy my cheese from Whole Foods if I'm looking for something unique.

How to make mozzarella:

2 gallons of water
2 cups of kosher salt
However much mozzarella curd you want
A china cap or other large hole strainer
Plastic wrap
Large bowl filled with ice water

Put the water on the stove and add the salt. It seems like a lot, but the curds are unsalted so you want to as much flavor as you can! Get it to about 160 degrees.(not boiling)

Pull it off the stove and set it on a towel, then put the strainer in the water.

Crumble off as much curd as you want (I usually don't go with more than the size of my fist) and drop it into the strainer.

The water isn't boiling, but it's pretty hot so this is why you use the strainer... so you don't have to go fishing around in hot water for your cheese!

Pull it out occasionally and stretch it, double it over, and put it back into the water until there are not more clumps left and the whole thing looks smooth and stretches easily.

Form it into the shape you want (balls are the easiest), wrap tightly with plastic wrap (it works well if you wrap it leaving 2 long ends, then just spin the middle part) and drop into the ice water.

Let it sit for a little while (about 10 minutes), then you can pull it out and slice it however you want.

Answer 2

It uses a lot of milk and if you want aged like cheddar a long time. As for junket ( rennet ) I just saw this at wal-Mart near the canning supplies, jars etc. I made colby and mozzerella. Both were good but unless you have a cheap souce of milk it will certainly not save money.

Answer 3

When you key in making cheese in your Google toolbar you will find a site where homemade cheese making is explained step by step with photo's. Very interesting

Answer 4

source link has dozens of great recipes. can be quite tedious, artesian quality would be worth seeking out, unless you are determined to make your own.

Answer 5

It's a LOT of work for a small amount. It's better to buy it.

Answer 6

not the kind you can eat.