Cheesemakers Are Us, Part II

I officially made my first cheese today.

Boiling everything in sight, and lime
juice and starter culture ready to go

For a newbie, the process is actually pretty complex, even for the simple cheese I made today. I was taking my time and going very slow, because I wanted to make sure I did it just right. It also took a lot of time to make sure I cleaned and sanitized everything perfectly. A website I read suggested that new cheesemakers should sanitize anything that comes near your cheese, until you are more experienced and know what shortcuts can be taken. So, I boiled the crap out of everything I was going to be using.

As I began to warm up milk to use to cultivate the cheese starter I have, I realized my new thermometer I bought just for this purpose was already broken! The glass tube holding the liquid inside was snapped at the bottom. No wonder the temp appeared to stay at 110. So, I had to sortof wing it for the culture. Out of one packet of starter, you can make several frozen cubes of starter, if you let it work in the milk for several hours and then divide it into ice cube trays. That was my first job for the day. Ready-to-use starter cubes: check.

Curds draining

Next I wanted to try to make some paneer, which is the Indian cheese you find in many Indian dishes. It is a fresh cheese which does not use a starter culture; it just needs milk and an acid, usually lemon juice, to separate the curds and whey. Then it is either pressed to form a firm cheese, or left "loose" if it will be used as a filling, for instance in the stuffed bread called Paratha.

Squeezing out the whey

I don't have any lemons in the house right now, so I used lime juice instead. I understand vinegar could also be used, or citric acid, which came in my cheesemaking kit. I wanted the tanginess of the citrus, so I went for the lime juice. For 4 cups of milk (I used 2% mixed with a little bit of cream, as advised by a cheesemaking site), it took 6 teaspoons of lime juice to get a good curdle. After letting it rest for about a half hour, I drained and pressed the curds in cheesecloth over a strainer. I reserved the whey, because I hear it is healthy and you can do things like cook rice in it and such. We'll see if I find a good use for it.

Pressing the cheese

I tried to squeeze as much whey out as I could, because I want to end up with a pretty firm cheese. 4 cups of milk doesn't make many curds, especially after really pressing out all the whey! I divided what I ended up with into two sections. One, I just salted lightly. To the other I added salt, pepper, and a mixture of dried herbs. They both then got wrapped tightly in cheesecloth and pressed under weight so I get a firm final product. I haven't tasted them yet. They are now moved into the fridge, and when Dan gets home from work tonite I am going to make some sort of curry out of them.

When I get a non-broken thermometer I will be able to attempt more complex cheeses with my cultured starter and my homemade cheese press (for which I bought the components today and will build this evening). The adventure continues...