I made mozzarella
30 November 2025 02:55 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
igenlodeI was given one of those 'cheese-making kits' and managed to make mozzarella cheese -- I was actually astonished at how successful it was!
I was thoroughly sceptical about the whole thing to start off with after I discovered that the recipes worked in proportions of a quarter of a gram of rennet to a *gallon* of milk; what sort of person just happens to have a spare gallon of milk to use up, unless they have a house cow? Or two pints of double cream? I didn't have cheesecloth, a thermometer probe, dechlorinated water, or thick rubber gloves either, so the claim that "a ball of freshly made bouncy mozzarella will cost you next to nothing" was clearly far from true -- in the end I compromised and paid £3.50 for eight pints of whole milk (still not cheap, even given the rock-bottom prices paid as a loss-leader product) and £2 for rubber gloves.
(It has only just dawned on me that eight pints is, in fact, a whole gallon -- I thought I was doing a half-gallon and halved all the other ingredients, which makes it all the more surprising that the recipe worked, but explains why I felt the need to add extra salt!)
Unsurprisingly I struggled to find a pan big enough to hold all that milk -- even my pressure-cooker was too small -- but my big jam pan just held eight pints, with very little scope for stirring. I forgot to add the citric acid solution before starting to heat the milk, with the result that it began to curdle as soon as I did add it, and then didn't leave the rennet long enough to act, on the assumption that the reason the milk wasn't setting to a smooth junket in the ten minutes specified was because it had already curdled; in fact it eventually did set solid in the bottom of the pan towards the end of ladling out, at the point after it was supposed to have been cut into curds and separated. Of course this was almost certainly because the proportion of rennet had been lower than I had thought; I was trying to measure out an eighth of the packet by means of dividing it in half and then in half and then in half again, which in the end was little more than a small pinch. The tiny sachet was labelled as containing enough rennet for 100 litres of milk, which is a ridiculously large volume for a 'toy' kit -- I don't see why they couldn't have provided the rennet in rather less concentrated form so that the recipes didn't have to be quite so large!
I used my much-boiled pillow-case that has been a jelly bag several times already (after boiling it again) in place of a cheese cloth to line the colander, and laboriously poured off and then squeezed out six pints of whey, being left with a rather larger ball of cheese than I was expecting. I had assumed that the reason for requiring such a vast amount of milk was that the recipe gave a very small yield in terms of solids, but in fact it was huge by comparison with the supermarket balls of mozzarella, which made the cost of the ingredients look more reasonable in comparison. Although it raised the fresh question of how you were supposed to *use* that quantity of a soft cheese with a shelf life of only a few days... especially if there was only one of you.
The pillowcase proved perfect as a cheesecloth, and I did manage to dry out the curds considerably by dint of squeezing, and then proceeded to the rubber-glove stage. Without a thermometer I had simply heated the milk to the temperature I would normally have used for junket; now I microwaved it as instructed for periods of 30 seconds at a time, and to my astonishment, despite its exceedingly dodgy genesis the process actually worked. The cheese stopped being crumbly, then cohered and became elastic. "Stretch and fold the curds repeatedly" sounded like what you would do to stop bread dough being crumbly and make it elastic, so I simply heated it and kneaded it it the same way that I would have kneaded dough until it resembled the texture of dough, then kneaded in the salt. (Then tasted it and decided it was rubbery and completely flavourless, so added another quarter-teaspoon of salt; in fact I now realise I should have put in a whole teaspoon to start off with!)
Then I weighed it. I had 22 ounces of mozzarella, which was a ridiculously large quantity... although possibly not when made from an entire gallon of milk :-p
(For some reason the recipe booklet gives no indication of yields, so I had no idea what to expect.)
It does warn that home-made mozzarella won't melt and go stringy in the same way that shop-bought mozzarella will; I set out to make some pasta sauce in order to test it out, but unfortunately got distracted by the need to use up a knob of fresh ginger, and ended up making a curry sauce instead and quite forgetting about the cheese ;-D So I still don't know how it melts.
I ended up dividing it into eight balls, each of which looked about the size of the cheap (used to be 50p, but probably more expensive now) balls in packets that they sell in the supermarket, and submerged it as instructed in a cup of the leftover whey in the refrigerator. After some research on the Internet I was assured that it was possible to freeze mozzarella, so I fished four of them out again and put them into little freezer bags to try the experiment.
I then had to look for ways to use up six pints of whey, never having had more before than the relatively small amounts left over from making yoghurt -- I shall probably end up simply using it as a substitute for stock. I used it as the liquid for the curry sauce, although you wouldn't have known it, and made a batch of 'soaked pancakes', although that uses up a high proportion of egg (and sits on the stomach like lead afterwards!). But I still have a four-pint bottle of it and two bowls left over in the fridge.
I do hope the mozzarella tastes of something other than rubber from the eating point of view. I might need to spinkle more salt over it... but the miraculous change in texture was very satisfying as an exercise in its own right, as was the way I apparently got all the processes right using minimal equipment simply based on my experiences with other types of cookery :-)
I have enough rennet left for a nominal further eighty litres of milk, but I doubt I'll be doing much further cheese-making! (Apparently you *can* use powdered milk, despite the fact that the recipe booklet specifically tells you to use neither powdered nor UHT milk, and you clearly can use homogenised milk, despite the fact that various Internet 'homesteaders' claim you shouldn't use that either...)
I was thoroughly sceptical about the whole thing to start off with after I discovered that the recipes worked in proportions of a quarter of a gram of rennet to a *gallon* of milk; what sort of person just happens to have a spare gallon of milk to use up, unless they have a house cow? Or two pints of double cream? I didn't have cheesecloth, a thermometer probe, dechlorinated water, or thick rubber gloves either, so the claim that "a ball of freshly made bouncy mozzarella will cost you next to nothing" was clearly far from true -- in the end I compromised and paid £3.50 for eight pints of whole milk (still not cheap, even given the rock-bottom prices paid as a loss-leader product) and £2 for rubber gloves.
(It has only just dawned on me that eight pints is, in fact, a whole gallon -- I thought I was doing a half-gallon and halved all the other ingredients, which makes it all the more surprising that the recipe worked, but explains why I felt the need to add extra salt!)
Unsurprisingly I struggled to find a pan big enough to hold all that milk -- even my pressure-cooker was too small -- but my big jam pan just held eight pints, with very little scope for stirring. I forgot to add the citric acid solution before starting to heat the milk, with the result that it began to curdle as soon as I did add it, and then didn't leave the rennet long enough to act, on the assumption that the reason the milk wasn't setting to a smooth junket in the ten minutes specified was because it had already curdled; in fact it eventually did set solid in the bottom of the pan towards the end of ladling out, at the point after it was supposed to have been cut into curds and separated. Of course this was almost certainly because the proportion of rennet had been lower than I had thought; I was trying to measure out an eighth of the packet by means of dividing it in half and then in half and then in half again, which in the end was little more than a small pinch. The tiny sachet was labelled as containing enough rennet for 100 litres of milk, which is a ridiculously large volume for a 'toy' kit -- I don't see why they couldn't have provided the rennet in rather less concentrated form so that the recipes didn't have to be quite so large!
I used my much-boiled pillow-case that has been a jelly bag several times already (after boiling it again) in place of a cheese cloth to line the colander, and laboriously poured off and then squeezed out six pints of whey, being left with a rather larger ball of cheese than I was expecting. I had assumed that the reason for requiring such a vast amount of milk was that the recipe gave a very small yield in terms of solids, but in fact it was huge by comparison with the supermarket balls of mozzarella, which made the cost of the ingredients look more reasonable in comparison. Although it raised the fresh question of how you were supposed to *use* that quantity of a soft cheese with a shelf life of only a few days... especially if there was only one of you.
The pillowcase proved perfect as a cheesecloth, and I did manage to dry out the curds considerably by dint of squeezing, and then proceeded to the rubber-glove stage. Without a thermometer I had simply heated the milk to the temperature I would normally have used for junket; now I microwaved it as instructed for periods of 30 seconds at a time, and to my astonishment, despite its exceedingly dodgy genesis the process actually worked. The cheese stopped being crumbly, then cohered and became elastic. "Stretch and fold the curds repeatedly" sounded like what you would do to stop bread dough being crumbly and make it elastic, so I simply heated it and kneaded it it the same way that I would have kneaded dough until it resembled the texture of dough, then kneaded in the salt. (Then tasted it and decided it was rubbery and completely flavourless, so added another quarter-teaspoon of salt; in fact I now realise I should have put in a whole teaspoon to start off with!)
Then I weighed it. I had 22 ounces of mozzarella, which was a ridiculously large quantity... although possibly not when made from an entire gallon of milk :-p
(For some reason the recipe booklet gives no indication of yields, so I had no idea what to expect.)
It does warn that home-made mozzarella won't melt and go stringy in the same way that shop-bought mozzarella will; I set out to make some pasta sauce in order to test it out, but unfortunately got distracted by the need to use up a knob of fresh ginger, and ended up making a curry sauce instead and quite forgetting about the cheese ;-D So I still don't know how it melts.
I ended up dividing it into eight balls, each of which looked about the size of the cheap (used to be 50p, but probably more expensive now) balls in packets that they sell in the supermarket, and submerged it as instructed in a cup of the leftover whey in the refrigerator. After some research on the Internet I was assured that it was possible to freeze mozzarella, so I fished four of them out again and put them into little freezer bags to try the experiment.
I then had to look for ways to use up six pints of whey, never having had more before than the relatively small amounts left over from making yoghurt -- I shall probably end up simply using it as a substitute for stock. I used it as the liquid for the curry sauce, although you wouldn't have known it, and made a batch of 'soaked pancakes', although that uses up a high proportion of egg (and sits on the stomach like lead afterwards!). But I still have a four-pint bottle of it and two bowls left over in the fridge.
I do hope the mozzarella tastes of something other than rubber from the eating point of view. I might need to spinkle more salt over it... but the miraculous change in texture was very satisfying as an exercise in its own right, as was the way I apparently got all the processes right using minimal equipment simply based on my experiences with other types of cookery :-)
I have enough rennet left for a nominal further eighty litres of milk, but I doubt I'll be doing much further cheese-making! (Apparently you *can* use powdered milk, despite the fact that the recipe booklet specifically tells you to use neither powdered nor UHT milk, and you clearly can use homogenised milk, despite the fact that various Internet 'homesteaders' claim you shouldn't use that either...)