Home made cheese question

[pinkcherrychef]

Hi there glad to be here I hope you all will be nice and polite to me here.

I am looking for good info on how to make hard cheese like mozzarella. I prefer to make everything from scratch. I can not for the life of me find rennet here in the country I live in. Here they use hard cheese already made as like a starter instead of rennet so my hubby tells me. I heard ladies bed straw, neem, stinging nettle can also be used but I can't find those either.

I don't think I am allowed to use the animal rennet in my religion (cause it's made from a baby animals stomach) only the vegan if I ever found it that is. I really want to make my own hard cheese instead of buying it. It's so much healthier, oh I love eating healthy I forgot to mention that.

I wish I could order vegan rennet online but ordering abroad cost a huge fortune in shipping cause of the stupid taxes here. So I can only order stuff within Africa, and I've yet to find an online shop that here that sells vegan rennet. So does anyone have any tips on what I can use to curdle the chese to make it hard enough for like mozzarella and other cheese similar to it?

 

[CraigC]

Hi there glad to be here I hope you all will be nice and polite to me here.

I am looking for good info on how to make hard cheese like mozzarella. I prefer to make everything from scratch. I can not for the life of me find rennet here in the country I live in. Here they use hard cheese already made as like a starter instead of rennet so my hubby tells me. I heard ladies bed straw, neem, stinging nettle can also be used but I can't find those either.

I don't think I am allowed to use the animal rennet in my religion (cause it's made from a baby animals stomach) only the vegan if I ever found it that is. I really want to make my own hard cheese instead of buying it. It's so much healthier, oh I love eating healthy I forgot to mention that.

I wish I could order vegan rennet online but ordering abroad cost a huge fortune in shipping cause of the stupid taxes here. So I can only order stuff within Africa, and I've yet to find an online shop that here that sells vegan rennet. So does anyone have any tips on what I can use to curdle the chese to make it hard enough for like mozzarella and other cheese similar to it?

I have never seen mozzarella as a hard cheese. I consider it a semi-soft, excellent melting cheese. Here is an alternative to rennet.

Citric acid is also sometimes used in recipes for cheese, such as ricotta or mozzarella. For this purpose, 1/8 cup of lemon juice can be substituted for each 1/2 teaspoon of citric acid. This is about what you would add to 1/2 gallon of milk when making ricotta, for example.

 

[Morning Glory]

I was going to suggest citric acid too or, as @CraigC suggests, lemon juice or vinegar. I often make my own simple cheese and I suggest you start with that. It takes minutes. A squirt of lemon juice into milk- heat gently until the curds form on the surface (a few mins). Stain through muslin or a suitable cloth.

Making mozzarella is rather more tricky as you have to perfect the soaking and stretching technique (that is my memory of watching a video ages ago). I've mot tried it. I suggest you start with the simple curd cheese....

 

[medtran49]

The soaking and stretching aren't difficult, it's the knowing when to stop when making mozzarella. I tend to always go too far and end up with homemade moz more like what you buy commercially then the lovely soft melty stuff from the Italian deli. We need to pick up some organic unpasteurized whole milk and try again. I'll just have to make myself stop before I think I need to.

 

[Francesca]

Welcome to CookingBites, @pinkcherrychef

I make from scratch, only Goat Milk or Cow Milk Ricotta .. If interested, I shall post the recipe in the Cheese Section ..

Fresh Cheese, ( not hard cheese), Mozzarella di Bufala is quite a bit complicated outside Italy ..

 

[Morning Glory]

The soaking and stretching aren't difficult, it's the knowing when to stop when making mozzarella. I tend to always go too far and end up with homemade moz more like what you buy commercially then the lovely soft melty stuff from the Italian deli. We need to pick up some organic unpasteurized whole milk and try again. I'll just have to make myself stop before I think I need to.

I'm impressed by your making mozzarella! I shall have to try. Could 'home-made cheese' be a good topic for the Cookalong, I wonder?

 

[Frizz1974]

Fascinating.

I would love to try making haloumi, I often make paneer (using white vinegar as the curdling agent) & labne and next week we will be making ricotta. My daughter needs to do a few test runs as she has an exam on it next term.

 

[medtran49]

Last time we got the whole unpasteurized milk, we made ricotta, mascarpone, and moz, but I messed up the moz again, went too far/too long, but the other 2 were great. We are extremely limited as to where we can get the milk, as unpasteurized milk has to be sold marked for animal consumption only. We can certainly give it a try, but, if I remember correctly, there is a point in making moz that was decidedly uncomfortable if you aren't used to having your hands in REALLY warm liquid. Just a memory tickle warning and I'd have to go look up how to do it again to be sure as it's been a while

 

[Morning Glory]

@Elawin - I think you are a home-made cheesemaker too. Have you ever tried mozzarella?

 

[pinkcherrychef]

@CraigC @morning glory I guess I should of mention I have already made ricotta with white vinegar and lemon juice. I've heard of paneer it's an Indian cheese very cool to make an simple. I've also made a low fat cream cheese to. So I've tried my hand at the simple cheese so now I want to try something different. So citric you mean like lemon juice? Or straight citric acid from the bottle if so where could I find that?

 

[Elawin]

@Elawin - I think you are a home-made cheesemaker too. Have you ever tried mozzarella?

No, I usually stick to paneer but I have made ricotta as that is very similar. The one time my ricotta just refused to go right, I put the pan back on the hob, heated it again and made paneer! I have quite a few recipes for home made cheeses but most of them need rennet (and I always forget to buy any ) or are too salty for my taste. @pinkcherrychef If you make paneer and weight it for about 45 minutes with about 5.5 kg of weights, it is quite solid, although not hard enough to grate. It has a very high melting point, so it can be substituted for halloumi. I like mascarpone too. It's a very soft creamy cheese made from milk and lemon, but the cooking method is slightly different. I shall be experimenting with other cheeses though.

 

[pinkcherrychef]

No, I usually stick to paneer but I have made ricotta as that is very similar. The one time my ricotta just refused to go right, I put the pan back on the hob, heated it again and made paneer! I have quite a few recipes for home made cheeses but most of them need rennet (and I always forget to buy any ) or are too salty for my taste. @pinkcherrychef If you make paneer and weight it for about 45 minutes with about 5.5 kg of weights, it is quite solid, although not hard enough to grate. It has a very high melting point, so it can be substituted for halloumi. I like mascarpone too. It's a very soft creamy cheese made from milk and lemon, but the cooking method is slightly different. I shall be experimenting with other cheeses though.

Good to know I'll try and make it one of these days. I just want to make mozzarella because it's one of my favorites and I need it to make pizza. I could buy the store stuff but that's no fun. Thanks for the tip.