Yes, you can make your own mozzarella. It gives you a great treat if you are missing the lovely soft mozzarella from South Mountain Creamery. All you need is milk, rennet, citric acid and salt. I got my recipe here. My first venture into cheesemaking. I halved the recipe.
I had a half gallon of fresh raw milk. Friends with cows are wonderful to have. I am doing a swap. Garlic scape pesto from my garlic next month for the milk to make cheese.
Bring milk with citric acid solution to the proper temp. Add the rennet solution and let it rest off the heat. It will begin to look like this. Mine took longer than ten minutes.
We have curds and whey. Not quite firm in the pic, but they got there. Curds being firmed up in the microwave.
After two 30 second cycles in the microwave, I added the salt and started to massage it and stretch it.
It needed another 30 seconds microwaving to get to the right temperature. I also lost my photo assistant to lawn cutting, so no pics of the stretching cheese. Here is the final product.
Fresh raw whole milk makes a softer creamier cheese. 2% milk, not ultra pasteurized supposedly makes the shinier white more solid version. It will be served tonight with venison steaks, for my local meal. Pics of the chilled sliced cheese later tonight or tomorrow.
I was surprised at how easy it was. Now, I need to figure out what to do with a large amount of whey. I hear I should use it instead of water in grains, soups, couscous, stews, and that it freezes well. I have about 50 ounces of whey in the fridge. More experimentation this week.
You know you’re a locavore when you make your own cheese. Next project, maybe a simple goat cheese with herbs. We know people with goats.
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