When it comes to making cheese, people usually thinks of complicated equipment and cheese processing line. In fact you can just make cheese at home. It is pretty easy when you have the proper equipment and ingredients. A lot of people fail because they get one or the other wrong.
Let’s see how we make Mozzarella cheese, almost everyone likes it, and it’s probably one of the easiest cheeses you can make from home.
So to beginn with making mozzarella cheese, you’ll need some basic cheese equipment and ingredients:
Unpasteurized milk. It's not that easy to find it at local grocery store, but you may try to ask around the local health foods stores local to you. Your best bet is to talk to a local dairy or even check out your farmer’s markets and see if you can find someone there. The fresher the better.
Purified water- Cholorinated tap water will not play well with the rennet tablet and your cheese making efforts will fail.
A rennet tablet or half of a rennet tablet. You can buy some on website.
Citric acid. You can also find it on the Internet.
A food grade thermometer. Digital or manual. You want it calibrated correctly so you know the exact temperature of the milk.
Later you need some salt.
A pot. Stainless steel or glass pot. Do not use aluminum or enamel.
A stainless steel colander.
a glass measuring cup
A stainless steel slotted spoon. Do not use any other material.
If you have already prepared all the materials above, you can go the first step of making homemade cheese.
Dissolve citric acid in a quarter cup of purified water.
Pour your unpasteurized milk into that stainless steel pot. Don’t turn on the heat yet. Add the dissolved citric acid into your pot with the milk.
Stir for about 30 seconds without heat.
Now turn on the heat and stir and keep temping until your milk reaches 90 degrees.
At about 10 degrees away from having your milk away from being 90 degrees, prepare the rennet tablet to your milk(It should include instructions on how much water to add to it ).
It’s okay if the rennet tablet doesn't dissolve all the way. Small chunks are okay.
Turn off the heat and remove your pot from the burner. Pour the rennet mixture through your slotted spoon into the pot and stir for 10 seconds. Do not overstir it.
Put a lid on your pot and walk away from your pot for about 5–10 minutes. Busy yourself with something else like laundry, homework, etc.
Now check your curd.
Spatula is good choice to“cut the curd” Slide the spatula down the side of the pot and check to see that the whole thing has solidified. It will be like yogurt. Not the soft sugary kind from Yoplait.
Your curd should be solid and ready to cut.
Just take your spatula and gently start cutting long rectangular squares through the cheese in rows. Make sure you’re reaching to the bottom of the pot with the spatula when you do this. You want it to go all the way through.
Now repeat the same process but the opposite direction. So now you have a bunch of squares of curd. This helps release the excess rennet.
Now gently swirl the pot so that the mixture gently sloshes. Don’t do it too hard or you’ll have a mess and could ruin it.
Temp your curd but make sure that you don’t touch the bottom of the pot with the thermometer or you’ll get an inaccurate reading. It should have held the temp from 90 degrees but a little under is okay too.
Now reheat the mixture slowly to bring it to a 105 to 107 degrees. This will help set the curd.
To make sure the heat distributes evenly without ruining it by mixing it with a spoon, gently swirl it like you did before. This helps the rennet release from the curd making it easier to make the cheese.
Keep doing this until you get 105 to 107 degrees.
Turn off your heat. Put the lid back on and remove from the heat.
Now gently take your slotted spoon and pick up the solid chunks and put it into the colander. Once you’ve added all the chunks, gently turn the colander like you would a wheel and let the weight of the curd do the work of “pressing” out the excessive liquid.
When the majority of the liquid is drained, gently press the chunks with your hand to help remove the extra liquid and get a very basic round shape of the mozzarella.
Place the chunks into a microwave safe bowl and microwave for 1 minute. For high powered microwaves, use the low power option.
Remove from the microwave and drain more of the liquid.
Start kneading the cheese to help distribute the cheese and you might start to see the cheese bond together. Remove the excess liquid and return to the microwave for another 30 seconds and remove again to knead out more liquid. Now grab the cheese in your hands and gently pull on it from opposite ends. It should stretch. Keep stretching the cheese until it has an almost glossy look to it.
Next, shape the cheese however you like. Whether its a round cheese block or a rectangular block.
Now dunk it in an ice water bath for about 15 minutes. When the time has passed, remove the cheese and gently blot it off with some clean paper towels and wrap it or store it however you would like.
1 gallon of unpasteurized milk combined with these ingredients should net you about a 1lb of cheese, so just adjust accordingly if you want to make a bigger batch.
