Making Cheese

If you know me, you know that I *love* cheese.  It is my second favorite food.  (Bread is #1).  I have way too many favorite cheeses to list, but it's safe to say that over the course of my life I have eaten more cottage cheese than any other type of cheese.  So I knew that one of my 40 Things would be to make homemade cottage cheese.

I read through some online recipes and settled on this one by David Lebovitz.  The first step was measuring out one quart of whole milk.

 

As instructed, I brought the milk to 85 degrees, added the rennet, then let it sit at room temperature for four hours.

 

Here's the big reveal.

 

I made long slices in the mixture, then heated it gently until the curds separated from the whey.  Then I strained out the cottage cheese. 

 

Almost done!

I tasted it at this stage (yum!) and then chilled it for the recommended 1 hour.  I tasted it again (yum!) then added the cream and tried it again (yum!).  Goal #9 accomplished!

One of the other items on my 40 Things list was to make ricotta cheese.  In my research, I learned that ricotta is made using the leftover whey from making other cheese.  How convenient, as I had a bunch of leftover whey from making cottage cheese.  So I ended up making two different cheeses in one day.  I used this ricotta recipe by Jill McKeever.

It literally took five minutes.  I slowly heated the leftover whey to 200 degrees.

 

I poured it through a coffee filter and about two tablespoons of ricotta remained.  

I tasted it at this stage (yum!), then squeezed the remaining liquid out and tasted it again (yum!). I refrigerated it for an hour, then tasted the last tiny bit (yum!).  Goal #10 achieved! 

Out of curiosity, I measured the remaining whey.  

I started with 4 cups (1 qt) of milk and ended up with approximately 1 cup of cottage cheese, 2 tablespoons of ricotta cheese, and 2.5 cups of whey.  I used most of the remaining whey to make bread (replacing the water with whey).  Not a bad use of a quart of milk!