Making Basic Cheese (Part 1 Culturing & Separating Curds from Whey)

Three cows in milk will give you a LOT of dairy products.  Besides milk there are other value added products like, butter, creme fraiche, whipped cream, kefir, buttermilk, and various types of cheeses.  Let's make some basic cheese!

The first thing we do when making basic cheese is adding a culture to the milk.  The culture we are adding is buttermilk that we've frozen in ice cube trays.  You use 1 1/2 to 2 Tablespoons of buttermilk to 2 gallons of raw milk.  We thaw out the buttermilk.

Thawing out a couple cubes of frozen buttermilk

We sterilize the pot we will be making the cultured milk in by boiling about a half inch of water for 5 minutes and allowing it to steam.

A squeaky clean pot

Here are two gallons of fresh raw milk that we got from milking Daisy and Rosie. We've just gotten it out of the refrigerator.

Fresh, rich milk

Once the pot has been sterilized, we pour the milk in the pot and warm it until it reaches 68 degrees Fahrenheit.

Bringing the milk up to 68 degrees

Then we add 1 1/2 to 2 Tablespoons of buttermilk to the warm milk.  We allow the milk to culture by letting it sit for 8 hours at room temperature.  After 8 hours warm the milk up to 86 degrees Fahrenheit.

Adding buttermilk, allowing it to sit for 8 hours and then warming it up

Now we add 8 drops of animal rennet to half a cup of water.  Animal rennet comes from the stomach lining of young calves and will cause the milk to separate into curds and whey.

Adding 8 drops of animal rennet to water

Once the milk is warmed to 86 degrees, pour the rennet water mixture into the warm cultured milk.  Stir and allow to sit for an hour.

Adding rennet to the cultured milk

In an hour, you want to test for a "clean break" by inserting your finger at the edge of the pot.  It should be firm and not leave gooey stuff on your finger.  If it does allow it to sit a little longer.

Checking for a clean break

Once you have a clean break, you want to cut the curds with a knife into half inch cubes by cutting in one direction and then spinning the pot and cutting in the other.

Cutting the curds

Then stir the curds with your hands and start slowly heating it to 102 degrees while stirring.   

Look at those nice curds!

Now cut the larger cubes into smaller ones while continuing to stir.          

Cutting them into smaller pieces

Stir for about 15 minutes after you heat it to the desired temperature.  You'll notice the curds start to shrink so that they look like scrambled eggs.

The 'scrambled eggs' look

Now turn off the heat and let the curds sink to the bottom for a few minutes and then pour off the whey into another container.

Pouring off the whey

Once you get toward the end, you might want to use a colander to keep your curds from pouring into the whey.  What to do with all this whey?  Well, you could make ricotta cheese with it.  Perhaps we'll show that later.  Another thing we do is feed it to our hens.  They love it and it is full of protein and probiotics (beneficial bacteria).  You can also use whey as a preservative when lacto-fermenting vegetables.  We do this when we make our sauerkraut and gingered carrots.

Where there's a will, there's a WHEY!

Tune in tomorrow for Part 2 of making basic cheese as we illustrate how a bunch of gooey curds transform into cheese.