Cheese making

[Kansas Jake]

Does anyone here make their own cheese? I tried making some paneer this morning and it worked out ok. My better half picked up a book on cheese making at an event we attended a couple of weeks ago. We will also be trying some other recipes including making mozzarella.

I'd like to hear of your experience.

 

[George]

Never made any real cheese, but I used to make "yogurt cheese" quite often. It's not really cheese, just yogurt drained until it gets as thick as cream cheese. Back then I was making yogurt, too, so it was a natural, and it's good stuff. Lower in fat than real cream cheese, very tasty for me.

All you do is put plain yogurt in cheesecloth and let it drain for 12-24 hours until it's as thick as you want.

Spence

 

[Loyalist Dave]

WOW, as a matter of fact I'm going to make a farmer's cheese tonight (paneer is a "farmer's cheese") but I'm going to put some bacteria culture in it and let it get some additional flavor before I add the lemon juice and finish it....

Wish me luck.

LD

 

[coloradoclyde]

Made cottage cheese once....it tuned out ok..
Tried my hand at smoking cheese.....easier said than done...
Hard cheese is what I want to make.....
Great idea for a topic.... :thumbsup:

 

[Kansas Jake]

My wife made yogurt a number of years ago, but hasn't done it for a long time. If I remember right she used our dehydrator to provide the heat to make it.

The paneer (farmer cheese), I added some smoked salt to give it a little flavor. One could also use herbs or other things. It was very easy, just heated whole milk and added some apple cider vinegar to get the curds, strain through cheese cloth and done.

 

[BullRunBear]

Like Spence, I've made yogurt cheese by letting yogurt drain through cheesecloth or in a fine mesh strainer. It ends up like cream cheese and you control the thickness. The stuff is very versatile. It tastes great by itself or you can add lemon, olive oil, fresh or dried herbs, etc. The whey that drains off can be used in place of buttermilk for most recipes. You can use commercial yogurt to do this but I've always had better results with home made yogurt which gives a smoother product.

If it matters, I've read that draining the whey cuts back on the carbs and calories a bit without losing any nutrition.

This reminds me to start a new batch of yogurt tomorrow.

Jeff

 

[Loyalist Dave]

I've made hard cheese, this was my first attempt at Paneer with some added bacteria for flavor.

Hard cheese you need rennet, and some cooking time. The longer you cook the cheese, the harder it will be. You have to cut the curds into about 1/2" to 1/4" cubes, then let them sit in warm water for a while which allows more surface area = more water loss. The heat allows the proteins to bind up harder too. Then the curds are drained, washed, salted, and pressed...this will finish your hard cheese.

Last night I heated some whole milk with some cream added, plus I added some culture that I had created by letting some buttermilk sit on the kitchen counter for about three days, then froze it in an ice cube tray to give me cubes of the stuff that can be stored over a long period of time. I think it needs to "ripen" a bit longer (like several hours) as I didn't get much flavor OR the freezing messed up the bacteria.

Anyway, I added cider vinegar and it curdled in to bits of curd with whey, poured it off into a double cheese cloth, drained it and ended up with some lovely though not very tasty farmer cheese.

SO in the future although the milk had started to show bubble of a boil beginning to form, I think I will cook it more, as the cheese was Ricotta-like...which would go very well in a lasagna, OR I could make some and add some garlic and herbs and use it as a cracker spread for company during the holidays.

I am also thinking of using a thick piece of linen canvas with a rather simple, thick weave, instead of the cheese cloth, as the cheese cloth seems a bit too "open" even when doubled.

1/2 gallon whole milk
1 cube of buttermilk culture
1/2 pint heavy cream
1/4 cup cider vinegar
1/2 tspn of fine sea salt

I will try it again and give it several hours to be warm to see if the bacteria will give me any flavor. I will also try it plain, with lemon juice instead of vinegar. My cheese making manual says for something like a hard cheese I should add calcium chloride solution to aid the rennet when using pasteurized milk...I may try that in the future too.

What I ended with is good. It would accept herbs or red pepper well, it's very Ricotta-ish, so it would also accept sweetener and maybe make a good cannoli filling, thought the texture would be a bit different.

:idunno:

This could easily be done in a camp or living history setting, and I'm thinking suspend the cheese in the cloth inside a large, covered pot to allow it to drain and keep bugs off of it until time to eat it.

LD

 

[George]

This could easily be done in a camp or living history setting, and I'm thinking suspend the cheese in the cloth inside a large, covered pot to allow it to drain and keep bugs off of it until time to eat it.

But to make it really HC, you need to first do what James Nourse, Sr., reported in his journal on a trip to the Kentucky frontier in the spring of 1775:

" Jennings killed buffalo cow it had no calf along--Got some milk---very good..."

Now that would impress. :grin:

Spence

 

[Kansas Jake]

I took the whey from the paneer and used it to make some whole wheat bread. I did cheat and use a bread machine rather than do it by hand. It made good bread. I used about half the whey and refrigerated the rest for something else.

 

[zimmerstutzen]

Easy to make lemon juice cheese. Turns out riccota. Takes about a half hour and then over night to drain.

 

[Loyalist Dave]

Actually I'd like to get a source for unpasteurized milk, but here in the People's Republic of Maryland, you have to actually be part owner of the animal or the dairy will get fined for selling you raw milk....

LD

 

[zimmerstutzen]

Dave, I have the opposite problem. I have two milk cows, but my Mrs. Won't let any raw milk into the house. I did use some raw goats milk occasionally. Made cheese with it too. Happy to say the goats are gone.

Nothing better than a fresh cold glass of raw cow milk with the lumps of butter fat floating in it.
(Goat milk is naturally homogenized)
The one cow will reluctantly stand to be milked. She is half holstein and half angus. Right now she is nursing a 4 month old calf. You want some, come and milk her. I am 20 miles north of Whiteford MD.

 

[zimmerstutzen]

I'll even sell you a .01 % interest for a buck.

 

[George]

Why take the risk of using raw milk? Nothing nutritionally to be gained, a great deal to be lost.

Spence

 

[zimmerstutzen]

The Pasteurization process also kills good bacteria that exist in the milk. There are chemical changes associated with the process as well. It isn't exactly true that there is no nutritional loss. There is definitely a taste difference. I agree that unwholesome milk can be a threat. How many new born babies are fed raw human milk and have problems
How many calves get sick and die from it? Much of the raw milk concern is just alarmist left wing manure. Don't eat butter, eat chicken not pork, wear your helmet to ride a bicycle, etc. I'll eat what I want in moderation, drink a case a beer and a bottle of whiskey a year, and eat lots of smoked salmon, whether the goodie-two- shoes like it or not.

A closed herd without problems is of such a small risk that it is safer than riding in a car. The threat of disease from wild game is multiple times higher.

 

[George]

Much of the raw milk concern is just alarmist left wing manure.

Didn't mean to set you off on a tirade, just curious if you were uninformed about the risk of raw milk or knew about it and elected to accept it. I think you will find that the science/biology/medicine of raw milk has been well worked out for a very long time, and that the information and risk assessment of the CDC is correct. There is a lot of folklore associated with the drinking of raw milk for some people

A lot of people think seatbelt laws and helmet laws are left wing manure, too, but, like pasteurization, they save a lot lives, of both the right and left persuasions.

Spence

 

[coloradoclyde]

Did you know that pasteurization of milk goes back to colonial times?

 

[zimmerstutzen]

Back in the days of hand milking, the cows would manure and manure splashed drops and dust into open buckets of milk. Some Farmers didn't care about milking cows with infected wire cuts or mastitis etc. ( even to today with that) if you have a healthy closed herd and observe strict cleanliness measures there is no problem.

I would not buy raw milk from a place I don't visit during milking. But frankly, you stand a higher chance of illness from a restaurant salad.

 

[Kansas Jake]

I'm lucky I survived to adulthood considering all the raw milk I drank as a kid growing up. Mom did pasteurize milk a couple of times, but we didn't care for the taste.

Now I understand there were and are issues with raw milk, but I don't know of any farm kids in the area where I grew up that got sick from raw milk.

 

[Loyalist Dave]

Why take the risk of using raw milk? Nothing nutritionally to be gained, a great deal to be lost.

You're right, the risk is great, from 1998 to 2011 the CDC reports that two people in the United States died from infections from consuming raw milk.

The reason for the raw milk that I mentioned, because when making cheese you have to artificially replace the cream and add calcium chloride to get a really hard cheese with pasteurized, over-the-counter milk.

This is probably not a problem if one can get pasteurized milk with the cream, directly from the dairy before it has been skimmed or cooled, but it's not the same grabbing a jug out of the store to make cheese.

IF you were making Paneer or Farmer Cheese, you're going to cook out the bugs anyway in the process, which is why those cheeses don't develop a bold flavor as the bacteria has been killed off...so whatever natural flavor you have when you make the curds is it.


LD