Let's Make Some Fresh Cheese
Many folks are putting cheese in theitr bread. Why? Because all bread including Cheese Bread tastes good. Especially, if you put bacon in it. Fresh cheese making is easy, way easier than making bread. Here is how.
Fresh Cheese
Ingredients
4 cups whole milk
1/4 C vinegar or juice from a lemon or ¼ C of yogurt or 1tsp of citric acid dissolved in water (what I normally use.).
Directions
Bring the milk to a boil in a large pot. Add the vinegar, and stir until the mixture separates into solids and liquid. Drain the mixture through cheesecloth set in a large mesh sieve over a bowl. Rinse with clean water while in sieve to get rid of the vinegar. Wrap the ends of the cheesecloth around the curd and put a heavy weight on it such as a cookie jar, rice container or huge #10 Hominy can like I do..
Place the mixture in the refrigerator. Let the water drain completely for at least one hour, or overnight for a firmer fresh cheese.
Remove the fresh cheese from the cheesecloth, and use the fresh immediately, or refrigerate in a covered container for up to 5 days
Optional Additional – after 1 day draining in refrigerator
Leave in cheese cloth and soak in 6% salt water solution for 24 hours. Remove from cheesecloth and lightly salt the surface of the cheese. Wrap in parchment paper and let age in refrigerator for 60 days lightly salting every 7 days for the first 21 days.
WARNING - Be very careful here as you are now into hazardous to your health mode if you don’t know what you are doing…… and make a mistake that can – and will kill you and anyone else that eats your mistake
Comments
Quite the variety of nice fresh foods you are writing about. I love cheese. This is great! -Varda
My husband just asked me if I can make cheese!
Thank you for sharing! I certainly try that soon... When I feel better.... I have had a cold...
Akiko
So how many bodies do you have burried in your backyard?
I did buy the lot back behind ...........eeerrrr......... as an investment :-)
Having a long time associaltion with big commercial cheese maker who has seen what bad things can happen, I caution all to know exactly what you are doing if you go beyond making fresh cheese that lasts 7 days. If you do, it is best to let it ripen and age for 60 days before you eat it just to make sure things are as they should be....
One of the few lessons from Vietanm is that if you are about to be real dead right now, it is best to know exactly what you are doing and who you are doing it with. Same thing goes for cheese making.
I also make cheese from yogurt too.
How much cheese 4 cups of milk will give you? Not to be a party pooper, but it seems it takes a longtime to get to the end product.
I buy once in a while curd from a friend's restaurant and I make fresh mozzarella and it takes no time and you can eat it right away and there is no danger to do something wrong.
I remember my grandma doing something similar to make yogurt, I don't think she used cheese cloth and it did not take that long, but I was very small and I can't remember well.
Anyway, is nice to know the process.
Norman.
I make fresh Fromage Blanc and get a yield of about 2 lbs. per gallon of milk used. I use 3 qts. whole milk and 1 qt. manufacturer's cream. It is not a long process at all. Heat the liquids to 175 degrees F, then add buttermilk, lemon juice and let sit off heat for 10 minutes. Strain for 15 minutes, hang in cheesecloth for 30 minutes, add salt and voila! The whey that is left, your remaining liquids, can then be heated to 210 degrees F and you will have a nice batch of fresh Ricotta, thus getting two cheeses from the milk. You can, if you're really frugal, then drink or use the leftover liquids for other purposes. You don't have to use the cream, it just makes for a richer cheese. I make bavarians with the fromage blanc, thus the creaminess is better for this. If you have not tasted fresh ricotta, it is night day from the store bought stuff.
Fromage Blanc
1- Qt. Whole Milk
1- C Buttermilk
1.5 tsp Lemon Juice
salt to taste
of HOMINY! I can't get it here anymore, used to get it at Safeway, but no longer, (well its a long way up here from the southern states where hominy rules) and so far I haven't found a decent supplier of field or flint corn to make my own! And yes I can do that! My mother used to grow corn and make her own for years, but its not easy to get the right kind of corn with a short enough season to grow in northern BC, and her corn seed eventually died out on us. But she grew up on hominy, and I love it, but you simply cannot make it from sweet corn, and pop corn is ok, but its not really easy to make from that either! I just wish I could find those can's here! By the way the hominy process frees up the protein from the corn and makes it better for you. You can starve to death and wind up with pellagra eating plain old corn, or cornmeal products!
so sorry you can't get Hominy in huge cans, by the truckload at any gocery story in AZ, that only cost $1.99 US on sale. That is dirt cheap. I use it to make my own tamales and corn tortillas and chips. Yes, it you don'y lye corn to make hominy you will get pelegra as the Europeans found out after corn was brought back from the new world by Columbus. They didn't know to lye the corn and they all got very, very sick. I also use the left over cans to make my gas regenerating stoves / smokers that use a few twigs and 4 charcoal bricks to grill and smoke any meat for 2 - also dirt cheap and the best grilled meat you ever had.
Here is a picture