I’ve made my first starter – a process where you add some bacteria to milk and let it grow for a while, then freeze it into ice cubes so you can use it over the next few months. This is handy if you aren’t constantly making cheese with a continuous supply of live cultures.
The first cheese I made was Monterey Jack (by first cheese I mean first aged cheese as opposed to the 30 minute mozzarella or ricotta). It was just a 1/2 recipe since I didn’t want to bring out my big pot. The standard recipe in the book I have is 2 gallons and the larger pots I have are about 1.5 gallons. It will still be a couple months before it’s done.
The next cheese I made was Colby. This time I brought out the canning pot so I could do the full recipe. This pot can easily handle 5 gallons so I may look into getting a larger mold so I can do a double batch of some cheeses. (the type of mold you press the curds into to squeeze out the extra liquid, not the mold you put in the cheese for flavour).
One of the things I wondered about when I first made the “instant” cheeses was if there was a use for all the extra liquid the curds have come out of (the whey). There are many, so don’t pour it down the sink. Some people will simply drink it chilled. It’s not exactly like skim milk, but it’s ok. It’s great to use in baking things like bread or pancakes. If you use it right away, the whey from many cheeses can be reprocessed to make even more cheese – a type similar to ricotta.
After the Colby, I tried ziergerkase. You heat the whey to a hotter temp and use vinegar to help with the final curdle. With my initial 2 gallons of milk I was able to get about 2 lbs of Colby and 1 lbs of ziergerkase. (and the left over whey can still be used for baking). A nice thing about the ziergerkase is that you don’t need to wax it and wait 3 months or longer. After a week soaking in wine, it’s ready to go. The taste of the wine is fairly strong, so use a red you like.
John got me a cookbook that specializes in cheese recipes for our anniversary, so I want to start making some parmesan. That will be a new type of starter (different type of culture than Colby) and it also needs to age for almost a year.
