With
just a small amount of elbow grease and a few pieces of inexpensive
equipment, your whole family will enjoy fresh and aged cheeses made with
all the love and care that good food brings.
Whether you decide to make a quick and easy cream cheese, or try your hand
at making a sharp, aged Cheddar, you will find that your cheese tastes
much better than anything you can buy at your local grocery store.
This site will teach you how to make two of the more simpler cheeses,
Queso Blanco and Mascarpone. Both of these cheeses can be made using just
the ingredients that you probably already have in your kitchen. Other
cheeses require other natural additives such as rennet and starter
cultures that you will have to obtain through a supply store.
On
the next page, you will see a description of the cheese making process for
all cheeses, and the recipes for making Queso Blanco and Mascarpone cheese
will follow.
Queso Blanco cheese is a simple Latin American cheese popular in many
Mexican-style dishes. It is a crumbly, moist and slightly sweet-bland
cheese that acts quite like Cheddar when used in cooking.
Mascarpone is a delightfully sweet cheese that is wonderful eaten straight
from a bowl! Although it looks like a thick, grainy sour cream, its
sweetness makes for a wonderful dessert when mixed with fruit. Mascarpone
is famous as one of the main ingredients in Tiramisu, the famous Italian
dessert.
There are just a
few main ingredients when making cheese. These ingredients include milk
(of course), salt and a coagulation agent. What is meant by a
"coagulation ingredient" is a substance that causes the proteins
in the milk to clump together, or "coagulate" into a solid
curds.
There are two main ways to "coagulate" milk:
You can add acidic substance to the milk as the acids cause the milk
proteins to clump together. Natural bacteria cultures are the main way to
do this for most cheeses, especially the harder cheeses such as Cheddar.
Some of the softer cheeses, such as the Queso Blanco that we'll show you
how to make use vinegar to add acid to the milk.
You can also use a
substance called rennet. Rennet has been around for centuries and is one
of the fastest ways to cooagulate the milk into solid curds. However,
rennet does not add a particular flavor to your cheese, so most recipes
use a combination of bacteria cultures and rennet.
To make your Queso
Blanco cheese, you will need one gallon of whole pasteurized milk and use
plain cider vinegar as your coagulation agent. When making the Mascarpone
cheese, you will need one quart of 'light' cream and will use tartaric
acid for your coagulation ingredient, which is available in the baking
section of most grocery stores.
Equipment
You Will Need:
Although other types of equipment will be needed when making more
difficult cheeses, all you will need to make your Queso Blanco and
Mascarpone are the following items:
Make
sure that ALL equipment is completely sterilized. The easiest way to do
this is to run all of your equipment through the dishwasher without any
soap.
Use
the heat-drying cycle if available. This will ensure that your equipment
is sterilized and ready for use.
The main cause of a
ruined cheese is poor sanitation, so THIS is your most important step!
Ready?
Ingredients:
- 1
gallon whole milk
- 1/4 cup cider vinegar
Time
Required:
4
hours start to finish
Heating
The Milk:
Pour the milk into your pot and heat SLOWLY on your stove, on medium-low
heat. Stir frequently to prevent burning. Continue to slowly heat the milk
until it reaches a temperature of 180F. Maintain 180F for a few minutes
without letting the milk overheat.
Acid Coagulation:
After you have held the milk at a temperature of 180F for 10 minutes,
slowly stir in the cider vinegar until the milk starts to solidify and
small curds start to form.
Draining:
Remove the pot from the heat. Drain the curds by pouring the whole mixture
through a stainless-steel colander lined with fresh, sterilized
cheesecloth which will keep the small curds from escaping.
Tie
the corners of the cheesecloth together in a knot to form a bag. Hang that
bag over a pot for draining. The bag can be hung from a hook or you may
use chopsticks or spoons pushed through the knot to hold the bag to the
sides of the pot to drain. Let the bag drip and drain for 3-4 hours, or
until the bag stops dripping completely.
Serving
and Storing:
Open the bag and remove the solid mass of curds. They can be wrapped in a
plastic wrap or stored in an air-tight container in your refrigerator.
This cheese can be eaten immediately, or stored for one week in the
refrigerator.
