Under the Choko Tree By Nevin Sweeney

We Make Cheese - Mozzarella

Homemade mozzerella - the second batch!

Many years ago, back when we actually had a milkman and the milk was delivered in glass bottles we accumulated a surplus and I decided to get hold of some unflavoured junket tablets and turn it into cheese. I was interested in the process but somewhat lacking in understanding so to cut a long story short, after much hassle I produced a cheese flavoured roof tile. Sad but true.

So, when we got the idea of a family get together (on the occasion of my elder daughter’s birthday) to make cheese I decided that there would be no repeat of that sad tale and, I cheated. I bought a 30 minute mozzarella cheese making kit from the lovely folks at Green Living Australia (see the “Links” Section) and using the kit we had a hugely fun time and actually made edible cheese! This is how we did it.

When we got the kit it contained a number of things, but obviously no milk! At this point i would love to say that I walked down the backyard and milked the house cow, returning to the kitchen with 4 litres of fresh milk. Unfortunately in suburbia that is a difficult thing so to get my skills up I bought 4 litres of cold, pasteurised and homogenised milk after walking to our local supermarket. As far as i am aware we don’t have any working dairies near us so so have to make do with what you can get hold of.

The first step was to measure out the stuff you need to throw into the milk to help it along its journey to becoming cheese, the measures are by volume and quite small so it is worth investing in some small spoon measures. We already had some graduated spoon measures that go down to ¼ of a teaspoon so we were able to work through it. The following measures are for four litres of whole milk and the stuff we had to measure out was –

A pot fulla milk!

  • Calcium Chloride - 1/8 Teaspoon of Calcium Chloride solution diluted in ¼ cup of unchlorinated or demineralised water. The calcium chloride is added to increase the calcium content  of the milk, making up for calcium lost during pasteurisation which reduces the time taken for the rennet to precipitate the curd and results in a firmer curd.
  • Citric Acid - 1 ½ teaspoons of citric acid, diluted in ¼ cup of unchlorinated or demineralised water. The citric acid, as the name suggests is an organic acid derived from citrus fruit and acidifies the milk to assist the rennet coagulate the cheese.
  • Lipase - 1/16th of a teaspoon of lipase dissolved in ¼ cup of unchlorinated or demineralised water. Lipase is an enzyme that produces a stronger flavoured cheese. It needs to be stored in the freezer.
  • Rennet – Quarter of a rennet tablet diluted in ¼ cup of unchlorinated or demineralised water if you don’t use lipase; half a tablet if you are using lipase. Rennet is the enzyme which does most of the work of coagulating the milk. It also benefits from storage in the freezer.
  • Cheese salt – 1 to 1½ teaspoons. Cheese salt is very coarse and is not iodised. It is good stuff, absorbing moisture from the curd, helping the whey drain and making the curd shrink, it acts as a preservative and improves the flavour. The first batch we made we used 1 ½ teaspoons and found the cheese to be a bit salty but the second batch only had 1 teaspoon and this seemed best for our taste.

Raw Materials

Note – instructions are great, if you read them! The first time we made the cheese we missed the bit about doubling the rennet if you use lipase. This meant that it took a longer time to coagulate and we got a softer cheese; it was all OK in the end but make sure you double up on the rennet if you are going to add lipase.
To make all this stuff easy to identify and help keep track of where we were up to, we put the container with each of the ingredients on a sheet of paper and then wrote down what all of the stuff was next to each container.

So now let us cheese:

Pour the milk into a stainless steel pot big enough to give you some stirring room, so if you are using 4 litres of milk your pot should be 5 or 6 litres in capacity, then add in the calcium chloride, lipase (if you are using it) and the citric acid solution. Stir them all in well!

Measuring out the raw materials

Heat the milk to 32°C, gently and keep stirring as it heats. With luck it will start to curdle as the heating progresses.

Once the milk gets to 32°C, you can add the rennet solution (tablets dissolved in the water) and mix gently but well. We got a broad bladed spatula and moved the milk around but also with a sort of up and down motion too, to make sure that the rennet was well distributed throughout the milk.

Mixing in the Rennet

Remove the pot from the heat and let is sit undisturbed for 5 or 10 minutes until you have what is called a “clean break” or the curds firm up and start to pull away from the side of the pot. This seemed to take forever with the first, low rennet batch and if it is not happening with your batch leave it for a few minutes extra. It did eventually happen with us but took about 20-25 minutes whereas with the second batch it was almost instantaneous when we added the rennet. Milky whey means you should leave it longer, clear yellowish whey means you are good to go.

cutting the curd

Using a knife that is long enough to extend right to the bottom of the pot, cut the whey across, down and diagonally through the pot so you effectively get whey cut into 2 centimetre cubes. The reheat the curds and whey to 38°C or 40°C, stirring gently the whole time to ensure that the heat is evenly distributed throughout the pot.

Once you get there take the pot of the heat and keep stirring, the longer you stir the firmer the curds, then after 10 minutes or so rest scoop the curds out into a microwaveable bowl. We do this by starting off with one of those round, long handled scoops with all the holes in them and then when you get down to the little stuff pour the whey through a fine mesh colander to get the last bits and add them to the bowl.

Scooping out the curds

While all this activity is going on the curds in the bowl will continue to spit out more whey which can be poured off back into the original pot, then use your hands to press out more whey, returning it to the pot.

Put you bowl of curds in the microwave oven (you knew that was coming didn’t you?) and nuke it on high for one minute, then drain off any whey that has come out of the curd. The next trick is to fold the curds over on themselves in the bowl and press them down in the same way you would knead bread. It should coalesce into one mass with a shiny surface.

Kneading the cheese

Put the bowl back into the microwave and nuke for a further 30 seconds, remove and drain then knead it again. By now it will be getting quite warm, after years in the chemical industry working with hot paraffin wax I have developed asbestos fingers but if you find the temperature on your hand uncomfortable use (CLEAN!) rubber gloves.

When the cheese has cooled a bit while kneading, replace in the microwave and nuke for a final 30 seconds and add in the salt. Continue to knead until the cheese becomes stretchy at which point the process is complete.

The finished product - divided and cooling

You can now divide the cheese in half and drop into cold water to cool it down. We divided it into three balls, one for each family. The mozzarella will store in the fridge foe a week, we decided to store ours in water the first time and it went sludgy on the outside but still tasted OK. Storing dry in a sealed container seems to be a better option.

At the end of the day, we like a SERIOUS pizza!

We made the mozzarella as part of a family activity day in the same way as when we did the family preserving day (see under “community”) and it was a huge amount of fun. We also made a hard cheese of the cheddar variety, but that is another story.

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