Making Mozz

A while back I saw a segment on Better Homes and Gardens where they had a technique for making quick ricotta cheese.  It involved simply heating some milk and adding a little vinegar to curdle the milk.  It turned out just great for some lasagna I was making.  It also sparked an interest in making other types of cheese.  Most cheeses are rather involved.  There are several steps, like setting up the cultures which has to be done before hand, temperature can be very important, then it takes hours to cool.  The curds need to be compressed in a mold to force the extra liquid out of them, often a few times with progressive weights, and then you have to wait months for the cheese to properly cure. 

Not all cheeses are that complicated.  Today I made a simple mozzarella cheese.  Normally you’d age mozz a good three months, but the fresh mozzarella is great for salads or a snack.  I plan to put some on a homemade pizza.

Once the milk is warm, add some citric acid and lipase.  Citric acid makes the milk start to curdle, and if you make wine, you probably already have some around.  Lipase is an enzyme that gives the curds a stronger cheese flavor.  Heat the milk further and add some rennet.  Rennet is (originally) an enzyme taken from the lining of a calf’s stomach.  I can imagine how ancient people must have first discovered certain milk bags produced a different favoured sour milk curd.. or something gross like that.  Now they can make it in labs and there is even rennet that is entirely plant based.  This will really speed up the curding.

A handful of minutes later you can scoop out the curds and drain off the excess liquid.  I’ve found those metal strainers you get in the house-wares sections of the grocery store or dept store, work great.  The screen is tight enough to keep the curds from going through and loose enough to let the liquid drain fairly quickly.  If you’re not in a hurry, you can just leave it sit in the screen for a while to get more of the liquid out.

With this recipe, once you have the curds out, with any extra liquid drained, just pop it in the microwave for a minute to heat it up.  This will allow you to knead the curds into a smooth cheese.  Add salt to taste at this point.  Once the cheese starts to cool enough that it isn’t kneading easily – pop it back in the microwave for about 30 seconds.  Knead, nuke, knead again and you should have a shiny ball of yum.  You can drop it into a bowl of ice water to cool it faster and let it keep its shape better.  I just sprayed a little vegetable oil in a super-sized rounded mug and put it in the fridge.