Making Cheese

Jody and I were at the Cheese Importers in Longmont and ran across a kit to make your own mozzarella. So we said to ourselves, "We've seen them make it on TV, how hard can it be". So we decided to get the kit and then off to the store to get the ingredients. Luckily it really doesn't take much: a gallon of whole milk, some rennet, salt, and citric acid.

Gather all the ingredients and instructions

Start heating the whole milk

Once the proper temp is reached and the citric acid has been added, give it a few minutes to start working

Starting to see some curds now, so we start removing them from the whey. Kinda looks like cottage cheese in this form.

Once we have removed the curds from the whey, heat up the curds some more so that it is the proper temperature to stretch the cheese

Drain some more whey out, amazing how much was in there

Make sure it is hot enough to manipulate, it is not hot enough here, so we have to nuke it some more. 

Start forming it into balls. Still not sure it is hot enough here so the texture is not quite right

Some of the finished product

So it was quite fun to make our own cheese, it tasted pretty good especially for the first time trying it. It seemed like we didn't get a ton of cheese out of the gallon of milk we put in, but I guess that is how it works. Anyway, we have at least three more batches to do, because the kit came with enough stuff to do four. So maybe on our next try we will do better.