Bits of Melissa: 30 things in 30 days for 30 years

Day 10 of the 30/30/30 challenge - making cheese

No, not cutting the cheese! Making it from scratch! But how?! How is cheese made? I had been to the Tillamook Cheese Factory tour years ago and knew that the process was complex. Would I be able to make cheese at home with no knowledge of cheese other than the simple fact that I love it and its delicious? The answer is YES!

I know that I have been making a lot of things during the course of this adventure, but I am really enjoying making the things that seem like no one is making themselves. We spend hundreds of dollars, dollars we work hard for day in and day out on things we can easily make at home with items we already have in the pantry and fridge but just don't know how. A big block of cheese is now around $10! TEN DOLLARS! I don't know what minimum wage is these days but when I was a kid working my first job at Postal Annex (a job I loved!) that was 2+ hours of hard work just for one brick of today's cheese!! That is CRAZY!! While writing this I thought, hum.. I wonder how much American's spend on cheese because I bet its a ton, so I googled it - The average consumer eats 31.4lbs of cheese each year.

At Safeway.com 16oz (1lbs) of Tillamook Cheddar cheese costs $4.99. So the average consumer is spending around $150 a year on cheese alone!!! That doesn't include fancy cheese or if you have more than average cheese eating habit. And remember, that is per person, so if you have more than one adult and cheese crazy kids your spending even more. In my house we are spending at least $300 a year between Doc and I (on the average scale) but that doesn't include our cheese eating monster Ana and our love for fancy cheese. I would guess we spend probably $500-600 a year on just cheese. Let me say that again $500-600 a year on JUST CHEESE!

After last week's blog on butter I don't know if I will ever buy butter again. The cost of buying heavy whipping cream is half the cost of ready made butter and has a fraction of the preservatives. I think today I am going to make some honey butter and buttermilk biscuits just for fun - because I know how thanks to this adventure! And so do you, so what are you waiting for?!?

Okay okay, back to cheese. I am sure you can guess by now where I went to learn the art of cheese making - youtube of course! I watched a number of youtube videos, each one a little different than the other. I really wanted to make a good cheese but most called for Rennet which I could not find at my local grocery store so I went with a rennet free cheese. Farmer's cheese, specifically Paneer cheese.

Paneer cheese is a farmers cheese commonly found in India. The best part about Paneer is that is it rennet free which I found later while researching for my blog makes it completely lacto-vegetarian friendly along with a great source of protein.

So I decided to go with a video created by David Hughes, while not the typical instructional guide I gravitate toward I found his video to the be most informative and detailed, showing the process from start to finish. Like butter, I found the entire process much easier than I expected. Only, its a lot longer of a process.

The ingredients -
1/2 gallon (8 cups) of whole milk - I used organic
1/4 lemon juice
Variation options:
dash of salt/pepper
Garlic
Strawberry preserves
the options are endless.

The tools -
a large boiling pot
cheese cloth
cooking string or any type of yarn will work
a large bowl or another pot
flat bottomed wooden spoon

To get started add your milk to the large boiling pot, bring to a slow rolling boil over medium heat stirring constantly. This process takes about 20-30 minutes, so make sure you have time to devote solely to this process and wont be distracted. Stir... .stir... stir... right when it feel like you have been stirring forever and your arm is about to fall off, stir some more. Slowly it will come to a boil and you can reduce then heat as needed so the milk does not boil over - which basically means it doesn't get super frothy and/or burn. Once the milk has come to a rolling boil - if you stir the whole time and heat it slowly it wont boil over, instead it will just boil like water. Add the lemon juice and stir. the curds and whey will start to separate. Lower the heat a little and continue to stir for a minute or two. Then remove from heat completely and let stand for 10-15 minutes.

Finally a break! At this point I got out the cheese cloth and place it inside another pot so it hung over the sides and I could strain the whey from the curds. I also took this time to shake out my arm, have a sip of wine, and relax for a minute after all that continual stirring.

The next few steps are pretty easy and go by fast. Simply pour everything into the cheese cloth covered pot and slowly pull up the cheese cloth joining the edges together and tying them with a sting, leave a long tale so you can hang it somewhere in your kitchen, I just used my cupboards to hang it from. Hang and let the remaining whey drip out - the longer you let it drip the most condensed the cheese will be, if you want cottage cheese don't let it drip for long and its ready to eat. I wanted a brick type consistency so I let it hang for about 30 minutes then squeezed out as much excess as I could. After this I put the cheese cloth wrapped curds on a cutting board and topped it with a large pot filled with water and let it sit for about 3 hours. After that the cheese was cool and could be cut and eaten with crackers!

The end result was not tillamook cheddar but it was good, it had a very cottage cheese taste to it and i added salt and pepper to give it a little extra pow before pressing. I really liked it though, with crackers or veggies it made a great snack over the next few days.

Store in an air tight container.

I might make cheese for parties as an appetizer option but it looks like I will continue to spend ridiculous amounts of money on factory made cheese.

The goods -