January 2007

January 2007

Monday, April 25, 2011

making fresh mozzarella cheese

My daughter and I completed our first attempt at making fresh mozzarella cheese over the weekend.  I read a post from Kevin over at A Garden for the House blog about making cheese.  http://www.agardenforthehouse.com/2011/03/homemade-mozzarella-in-30-minutes.html
I ordered the cheese making kit he suggested ($32.50 w/shipping) It arrived in 2 days. We were very excited to undertake this new adventure.  It took us much longer than the 30 minutes it should have, but that was due to us not being sure if we were doing it right. We kept looking at the pictures and comparing to what we had on the stove. We finally just poured everything into a colandar and were surprised to find more curds than we thought we had.  We kneaded and stretched the cheese and ended up with almost a pound of fresh cheese. The only problem with making this with another person is that you have to share it wtih them!! Looking forward to making our next batch.  The kit comes with enough citric acid and rennet to make 40 batches of cheese. It also came with cheesecloth and a thermometer.  Give it a try and have fun! I only wish it was fresh tomato and basil season!!

7 comments:

  1. I've been thinking about wanting to try this ever since I read about it in some book... might have been Barbara Kingsolver. This sounds like a fun project to do with a young one.

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  2. Jess, it was pretty easy to do. What made us stumble was looking at the large pot of whey and not realizing there was so much curd on the bottom. We didn't think the curd had formed right. The amount of whey was deceiving.

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  3. Sounds like fun. I've been drooling over my tiny basil and tomato seedlings for weeks now. Add a little cheese and I'm in heaven.

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  4. This is on my to-do list someday- I'll be calling you for advice!

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  5. Yum, fresh cheese! This is something we've always wanted to try, too, but could never figure out where to get the rennet. I'm going to check out the link you've posted, thank you for the information!

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  6. I have always wanted to try this...how wonderful to share it with your daughter (can't imagine my mom making cheese)))...so high five on that! Basil and tomato season coming up!

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