I just made mozarella cheese for the first time, using a kit that my cousin Liz gave me for my birthday at least 4 years ago. It always seemed so daunting, but after reading in Animal, Vegetable, Miracle about using more local and home-grown/made ingredients, I decided to give it a whirl. Plus, she kept emphasizing how it only takes half an hour, literally.
I timed my effort, figuring that for a beginner, it would take longer, since that’s how cookbook recipes almost always go for me. I’m a mess in the kitchen, and while I’m cooking, it always looks like there’s been an explosion. So I gave myself an hour, just in case. I was shocked to roll up my ball of fresh mozarella in exactly 30 minutes, even with the heating of the gallon of milk on the stovetop.
I was really glad to have the two special ingredients for the cheese right where I needed them. Rennet is something that you can mail-order, or you can usually find it at health-food stores. Citric acid is also found at health-food stores, but even more commonly at ethnic markets, notably Indian ones, since citric acid it used to make things sour. I actually think you can get it at the regular supermarket, in the canning and preserving section.
The one thing that I had that comes from sheer force of will is my asbestos hands. I remember once, in Holland, I was staying with a friend and his family, and I was in some way involved in the preparation of dinner, and I grabbed something hot. Robert Jan said he would never do that, because he didn’t have “Mom hands.” I thought about it, and I realized that moms are a pretty large segment of society that is used to handling hot stuff, and can do it without flinching. Us and iron smiths.
I’m making pizza on Saturday, and I wanted to have the cheese ready. I figured I’d do it on Tuesday, in case I failed miserably and had to try again. I think I might do it again anyway, so I can have some really, really fresh moz for a grown-up pizza with fresh basil leaves and sun-dried tomatoes. You all know my tomato snobbery, and I realize dried tomatoes are not on the traditional Margherita pizza, but there just aren’t any fresh ones yet that didn’t travel across the globe to get here.
Also, it may not strike you as important or ground-breaking, unless you’re related to me by blood or marriage, but I found a local producer of tortilla chips. If you’re looking for local foods to eat, it’s a really good idea to find a local source of the items that take up a large percentage of you family’s food consumption. Something that’s at least 20% of what you eat can really add up in the petroleum column if you’re outsourcing to California and you live in Ohio. OK, we don’t really eat chips every single day, but it’s close.
May 20, 2008 at 5:16 pm
Making cheese sounds really yummy!! Is it cheaper than buying? I know it’s for sure alot better tasting and better for us.
May 20, 2008 at 7:55 pm
OK… recipe?
I have a recipe for making Mozz, (also Cream Cheese, Yogurt, and Cottage Cheese) from powdered milk and food storage items, and I have sampled it… is respectable when done properly. When done the way that I did it? is brown block of nasty. Will try for my next round in a day or two, but I’d like to have a half hour cheese from gallon of milk at my disposal too!
By the by, I buy my Rennet at the grocery store next to the Jell-O… is called Junket, and is used to make Tapioca?
oh… plus the lady who demonstrated food storage cheese making had a pair of rubber gloves that she used for cheese making… Is HOT! Asbestos hands indeed!
May 20, 2008 at 8:09 pm
Toni, it is cheaper, unless you buy the cheapest cheese, which is sometimes just a salty lump. The nice thing about making it yourself is that you can decide which milk to use, skim to whole, and if you get really good milk, you get really good cheese. And you can make sure to get milk that doesn’t have hormones or antibiotics in it, which the cheese will probably have, if you get it from a large operation dairy. Maybe we’ll make some while you’re here!
Bon, AAAK!!! I always though junket was like gelatin. I had no idea it was rennet! I’m so shocked, and excited that you can get it anywhere. So do you measure it the same? Is it powdered? And yeah, you could use gloves, but the only ones I had at the house are the ones I use when swishing the cloth diapers in the toilet. Um, I’m not using those for making cheese that I’m gonna eat. The recipe I used can be found at http://www.animalvegetablemiracle.com in the recipes section.
May 20, 2008 at 8:20 pm
Ooooh. I think I see a cooking project coming on. That actually doesn’t seem overwhelmingly hard, and the rate we go through cheese and eat pizza…
I’ve actually been thinking about trying the soap recipe you posted a while back, too, because those soaps you brought us were delish.
May 21, 2008 at 8:28 am
Oh yeah. I can’t wait to try this! I can eat Mozzarella like it’s candy. I hope they have a recipe for Provolone, because I’d love to try that, too.
May 21, 2008 at 9:54 am
The Junket comes in tablets…. the recipes I have actually talk about half or whole tablets. I CAN tell you that a half tab curds up a gallon of powdered milk… but you have to dissolve it before you add it.
May 21, 2008 at 9:34 pm
[…] no cause to complain, does he, when the aforementioned book combined with Sarah’s intriguing post to inspire me to make mozzarella and ricotta cheese tonight from scratch. Eliza and I tried two […]
May 24, 2008 at 11:05 pm
I totally understand finding local tortilla chips. Since they make up at least 1/2 of our food consumption, I am always on the lookout. Our favorite chips are made in Salt Lake but are $3.50 a bag! (And we go through a bag in two sittings!) So I limit us to one bag a week, otherwise we would have chips and salsa for dinner all the time. Actually, while I was pregnant and I still had my homemade salsa, I think that was all I really ate.
June 10, 2013 at 3:32 am
Now I am going away to do my breakfast, once having
my breakfast coming yet again to read additional news.
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