OH MY STARS!!!! I just finished making a batch of homemade mozzarella cheese, and I will never ever go back to buying the stuff at the store.
Here is the story about my recent cheese conversion:
One day, I was board out of my mind, so naturally I was on pinterest. I saw something about "Homemade mozzarella cheese in 30 minutes". I laughed and thought, "Ha, who makes cheese at home?!" Then of course I clicked on the link to see what it was about. Sure enough, on some mom blog a woman had a recipe for homemade mozzarella cheese. My interest was piqued. I read thought it, looked at what was involved, and started to browse the web. Eventually, I came across this website, http://www.cheesemaking.com. It appears to be a woman in the Northeastern area who makes cheese. I bought a kit from her site that contained all the random things that would take me weeks to track down on my own. The kit sat on my counter and the milk I bought to make it sat in my fridge, and the trial kept getting delayed for one reason or another. Finally, as my milk was about to pass it's prime, I hauled everything out to embark on a delicious journey.
Basically, here are the steps. If you really want to do it, I recommend checking out Ricki's website.
Stir milk and citric acid, heat.
Add rennet. Wait.
*Get SUPER excited because you can see it working!!!!*
Cut, stir, heat.
Drain, add salt, microwave.
Stretch. Drain. Microwave.
Stretch and shape.
I shaped mine into mini logs (string cheese), a log (for caprice salads, a personal favorite), and bit size chunks. They all look as ugly as sin. I'll upload pictures when I get my computer to cooperate.
Conclusion:
It's fantastic. It cost $30 something for the kit (including shipping) and $2.50 for the milk. It costs $8 at your typical store for a log of cheese half the size I made. While it'll take a few rounds of cheese to break even, the taste, texture, and just plain fun of making it, far out weight the initial costs of buying the kit.
The kit comes with enough product to make at least 30 batches (30x$8=$240 worth of cheese) and has excellent tips, and instructions.
ENJOY!!!
Update: I made it again with a friend today. It took us three times to get it right. We finally discovered that we needed a different brand of milk. We initially thought the rennet enzyme might have gone bad, so we used a new pill. Then it was still bad, so we decided to use a different brand of milk. Presto - that was the solution. Please post any questions you may have or your experiences making it!
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