Too Much Milk? Make Cheese!

A family that purchases milk from us went on vacation.  That meant we had a lot of milk on hand.  Normally when that happens, we make a bunch of ice cream and/or butter.  We can't let LuLu's good milk go to waste.  This time we figured, "Let's make cheese!"  Mozzarella is about the easiest to make.  Let's get started.  We pour 1 gallon of fresh milk into a pot and get it to 55 degrees.  This is whole milk.  None of the cream has been skimmed off.

1 1/2 teaspoons of citric acid dissolved in 1/2 cup cool water is prepared.  This is called inoculation.  It slightly acidifies the milk so that the rennet works.

This goes into the milk that is at 55 degrees, and it is stirred up.

Then 1/4 teaspoon of rennet is diluted in 1/2 cup cool water.  The rennet is the coagulation stage.  This causes the acidified milk protein to coagulate.

The rennet is added when the milk is 90 degrees.  We stir it up real good and then leave the pot alone for 5 minutes.

Next thing you know, you have curds!  It is the consistency of custard.  Once it is firm, you begin cutting all the way to the bottom.

Once the curds are cut, you put the pot back on the stove and heat the curds to 105 degrees F.  You'll want to gently stir the curds. Then remove the pot from the heat and stir for five minutes.  The liquid substance with the curds is whey.  Remember Little Miss Muffet?  She was eating her curds and whey.  

We then scoop out the curds with a sieve.

We work the curds, squeezing softly, to try to remove as much whey as possible.  We keep the whey.  We'll show you what we do with it in a later blog.  The curds are formed into three baseball-sized balls.

Then we heat the whey in the pot to 175 degrees and add 1/4 salt to the whey.  We put the balls of whey one by one into a ladle and dip into the heated whey for several seconds.  Each time we remove, we'll knead the curds.  The cheese gets smooth and shiny.  We do this for 3 or 4 iterations.

As you keep doing it the cheese gets elastic.

Did I say elastic?  I mean REALLY elastic!

The mozzarella cheese is done!  We roll them into balls.  One of the balls will be eaten warm, while the other two will be cooled in ice water and then stored in the refrigerator.

This is the one that is still warm.  I sliced it and dipped into some extra virgin olive oil with some sea salt and black pepper.

What a treat!  Homemade mozzarella is easy to make and easier to eat.