We all do love cheese. If you want to make delicious dishes with cheese at home, you should have a solid understanding of cheesemaking. In this article, we will assist you to prepare cheese on your own and so that you can use them for the recipes that you prepare.
History of Cheesemaking
To begin with, let’s take a quick look at the history of cheesemaking. Origin of cheesemaking is still unknown. However, we can predict that cheesemaking started around 8,000 to 10,000 years ago. That’s because we can find plenty of evidence which proofs that there was cheesemaking in Egyptian tomb murals and also in Greek mythology.
Back in the day, people discovered cheesemaking as an effective method available to preserve milk. In a typical farmstead, it was possible to see how people skimmed off the cream to prepare butter and use the rest of the milk for production of cheese. Since then, the cheesemaking process has been subjected to many different transformations as well. Let’s take a look at how the cheesemaking process looks as of now.
How Cheese is Made
Many people wonder and want to know the process of cheesemaking. If you want to know how cheese is made. Then be informed that cheese is made of nothing but milk. For making cheese milk is curdled. Expired milk is cheesy because that is also kind of curdled.
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Step by Step Cheesemaking with Raw Milk
Now let’s deep dive and take a look at the cheese-making process. You need to begin with fresh and warm milk. If you can use fresh and nice milk, you will be able to end up with supreme results at the end of the process. In other words, it is better if you can get the freshest milk and start transforming into cheese.
In order to get warm milk, you can think of getting directly from udder. Or else, you can warm it on your stovetop. However, you need to make sure that you are warming up milk slowly, so that you can proceed with minimum hassle.
As the next step, you should go ahead and acidify milk. This is where cheese making with raw vinegar comes into play. It is the best method available for you to acidify milk. You need to add the correct amount of vinegar into cheese so that you will get the desired level of acidity.
Main reason for acidifying milk is to remove bacteria present in it. Therefore, you will be able to make cheese healthy for human consumption.
Now you need to add coagulant into milk. Many different coagulants are available for you to consider in here as well. Out of those types of coagulants, rennet is the most popular. This enzyme has the ability to allow proteins found in milk to link together. Or, you can go ahead and add plant-based coagulants into milk. Then allow the milk mixture to form a gel. You should give it some time for the formation of the gel.
Once the gel is formed, you will be able to go ahead and test it for the firmness. This is where you can determine the doneness of the gel. You can press the gel with a clean hand and do the test on your own.
Check the firmness in gel. If it is perfect then go ahead and cut the curd down. Your milk would now appear like a giant blob. Therefore, you should think about cutting it to smaller chunks or cubes. You will be able to do it with the assistance of a cheese harp. You can also use whist or a knife to get the job done.
While you cut, you need to keep in mind that the size of the cut can create a major impact on the amount of moisture retained in cheese. If the pieces are too small, they will become dry. Therefore, you need to keep this fact in your mind when you proceed.
Now you have come almost to the end of making cheese. You will need to stir the curd in a vat for several minutes. It is even possible for you to stir up to an hour. In here, you need to be mindful about cooking the curd while you stir.
When you go through this process, acid can develop inside curd. On the other hand, the motion of stirring can cause curd to dry out as well. When you keep on cooking more, and when you keep on stirring, you will end up with dryer cheese.
This should be followed up with washing. Washing is the process where you tend to get rid of some whey from the vat and replacing that with the help of water. This can help you to create sweeter, milder and elastic cheese. You can even follow this method to prepare cheese paste.
As the last step, you will have to drain the cheese that you have. In here, you need to separate the curd from the whey. You will need to wait for a period of around 10 minutes to allow the curd to settle down in the bottom. You should work quickly during this process because you should conserve the heat. Keep putting the mush back together to develop a smooth wheel. Otherwise, cheese would fall apart.
Now, that you have learned the process of cheese making, you can do this adventure on your own. If you have any questions, concerns or feedback feel free to let us know in the comment section below.