This was an easy cheese to make and needs to be made while the whey is less than three hours old to get the best results. This recipe is from the booklet included in my Cheese Making Kit that I got from Green Living Australia. For those who missed my post last week, the whey is leftover from the Cottage Cheese I made. So you actually get to make two cheeses from one source of milk. Pretty clever science that I reckon.
Ingredients
3 Litres of Whey
400ml full cream milk
1/8 cup cider vinegar
1/4 teaspoon cheese salt
Equipment
Large Pot
Cheese thermometer
Stainless Steel slotted spoon
Stainless steel ladle
Stainless steel colander
Tight Weave cheese making cloth
Step 1:
Combine your whey and milk in the pot and heat (directly on stove) to 93 degrees C.
Step 2:
Remove from heat, add vinegar and stir. The curds will rise to the top.
Step 3:
Gently ladle the curds into the cheesecloth lined colander and drain.
Step 4:
Use the corners of the cloth to make a bag and hang the curd to drain for several hours. I used a rolling pin and suspended the cloth over the saucepan.
Step 5:
Turn the cheese out into a bowl and add salt to taste. You can also add herbs at this point too, which I would do next time. This is the finished result. Looks a funny colour in this photo and is drier than I am used to but tastes like Ricotta. I would not drain it for a few hours next time, maybe half an hour so it is still creamy. This weighs just under 300 grams, so a great result from the leftover whey.
And now I still have the whey left over from this process, just under the three litres I started with. As vinegar was added to make the ricotta, it is now acidic whey which apparently limits its use in sweet dishes. I will follow up this post with some other ideas of what to use the whey for. It is a fascinating process and one thing certainly leads to another in cheese making.
My next cheese making endeavour will be a Feta cheese, and now that I have my cheese cave I can start preparing to make cheddars and colby cheeses. I also found a great tutorial for haloumi cheese...now that would be awesome. I can see that I will need to learn to make low fat cheese soon...I can already feel the calories coming :)
