home made mozzarella
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Once you have all the ingredients together, this is really pretty easy to make. See below for ingredient sources. Adapted from Ricki Carroll's recipe. Ingredients: Equipment: |
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| Heat the milk in a large non-reactive pot over a gentle heat. Stir with wooden spoon to keep heat even. When milk reaches 55°F add the dissolved citric acid, and mix gently. Keep stirring as the temperature rises to 88°F, when the milk will curdle. Gently stir the dissolved rennet into the milk, with an up and down motion rather than in a circle. Continue to heat the milk until it reaches just over 100°F, and then turn off the heat. The curds will be pulling away from the sides of the pot, and the whey should become clear. Use a slotted spoon to remove the curds from the whey and place in a bowl.
Press the curds with the spoon to remove as much of the whey as possible, forming a lump of curd. Place this back in the hot whey (turn the heat back on), for about 30 seconds, until the curd has softened and melted a bit. It will be almost too hot to touch, so use rubber gloves if you have to. Remove with the spoon again, and gently knead the ball of cheese. Add salt to taste, and repeat this step a few times until the cheese is shiny and quite elastic. It should stretch into ropes when you pull it, if it breaks it needs more time in the whey. When the cheese is smooth and shiny, roll into balls. The cheese can be eaten warm or stored in the fridge for later. (use within 4 or 5 days). You can make a brine solution with the whey to store the cheese in, just add 3 teaspoons of sea salt to each cup of whey that you use. |
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*Vegetarian Rennet is available from cheesemaking supply stores and on the internet. You can also use Junket powder, which is available in some IGA stores on specialty shops. |
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| I couldn't find a supply of vege rennet in Australia, so i got some by mail order from this company: http://www.cheesemaking.com/ | |
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I"ve also heard that you can make rennet from stinging nettles, but I haven't tried this out yet. This lady has. |
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You'll be left with a lot of whey, from which you can get the last tiny bits of curd to make ricotta from. (ricotta = re-cooked)
And after that you can still use the whey for all kinds of things. Use it as stock, in soups and stews, add it to bread, smoothies or porridge.
Give it to the cat.
mozzarella
Recommendation / we just made the 30 minute mozzarella as per the Rick Caroll recipe (the same as this, only with the microwave) and - well, maybe it's just our particular (very odd looking) microwave - but it was really lumpy and not stretching well until we rejected it and went back to heating it up in the way (as documented here) and it worked fantastically! Loads of salt is good. Thanks Emma! x
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