Cheesemaking

I have been waiting for my Cheesemaking kit to arrive ever since I read that chapter in 'Animal,Vegtable, Miracle' by Barbra Kingsolver. It arrived and was as easy as advertised!

First get the ingredients together: bowl, 1 gallon of milk*, cheesemaking kit**, big pot, spoon.


Mix the citric acid with water and add it to the milk in the big pot - stir.


heat it until 90F. Check the temperature with the thermometer from your cheesemaking kit.


next add the rennant and let it sit covered for 5 min (according to the directions, but I waited about 10 to get a good whey separation). Then when it's hardened, you cut the cheese (literally!) and stir up the resulting curds


Then heat it up to 105F and ladle the curds out into a bowl and then drain off as much whey as possible.

Microwave on high for 1 min, drain whey. Microwave again, drain again, repeat until cheese it 135F and there is no more whey to drain.

Then, stretch the cheese- it is soooo cool! it stretches really really far!


Lastly enjoy. It was supposed to take 30min, I think I took closer to 45min, but still, easy! I've left out a few details, simply because you really need rennant to make cheese and it is darn near impossible to find. There's more how to on the website below if you want it.


* I used Winder Milk
** I ordered mine online from www.cheesemaking.com