Homemade Cheese

So, a while ago I came across a kit for making cheese. Urban Chesecraft started the venture when they realized that people "way back when" didn't make cheese with all the complicated steps and equipment that are often required today. So, they set about figuring out how to make cheese the old-fashioned way. And, lo and behold, they figured it out! And now they're making boat loads of money off of their cheese-making kits (okay, so they're probably not making boat loads of money, but they were able to birth a business out of it). And as such, I got suckered in to buying a kit and giving it a try.

Wow. Was I surprised at how easy it was (or, at least, how easy it can be)! I bought the kit for making ricotta and/or mozzarella cheese. The kit yields about 10 batches of any combination of the two.

I started out making ricotta, since it seemed to be the easier of the two. And it was very easy. In the end, it tasted good, very fresh. But I didn't think it was all that special. But, then again, I'm not really a ricotta cheese snob, so somebody else may have a different opinion. We opted to use the ricotta in lasagne, which turned out pretty good.

Regardless of the cheese you make, they both start out looking like this.

Eventually, they start to look like this. The chunky stuff is the curds, the liquid is the whey. (Sorry, forgot to take a picture of the finished product!)

The Urban Cheesecraft people instill a lot of confidence in you by telling you that as long as the cheese is edible, it was a success. You basically can't mess it up. Phew! This means that even if you started out making mozzarella, you may not end up with it. But as long as you can eat it, it's still cheese, so don't worry. That was helpful in starting.

So, with that in mind, I also tried making the mozzarella. This was easier than I anticipated and took about an hour to finish. I followed the instructions and came out with a ball of very, very soft mozzarella. I took half of it and it worked well as a cheese spread on crackers. I took the other half of it and kept working it in the microwave until it turned into something more closely resembling mozzarella. It was fairly easy to manipulate/knead and it turned out pretty good. I also added some fresh basil leaves to this half which gave it some good flavor. Next time I would add the basil earlier to see if the flavors blend more. I might also consider adding some liquid smoke to give it a smoky mozzarella taste.

This is the curds from the mozarella (and, it is basically also what the ricotta looks like).

Once the whey is drained from the curds, you can start stretching it. This is also when I added the fresh basil.

Stretching some more eventually got me to some pretty decent mozzarella!

All in all, it was a pretty fun experiment. It'd be interesting to try it again and see how the cheese turns out. I also learned a lot about Little Miss Muffet (I had no idea what "curds and whey" were or why she would want to sit on a tuffet eating it). I still have some of the ingredients to make more, so I'll keep you posted on how it turns out.