If you have been following along you may have read last Monday’s Make it Yourself tutorial about making butter. This follows it since I used the milk that was left over after taking the cream off the top of my gallon of raw milk. We are making Farmers cheese. Farmers cheese is great to slice and put in a sandwich, crumble into a salad, fry it (very good) or just eat it straight up.
Once the cheese is made we will still have one more thing left from that gallon which can be used…whey. I save the whey for pancakes, waffles and baking and I have made some pretty yummy pasta using the whey are water before. Who knew you could get so much from one gallon of raw milk.
What you will need:
1 gallon of milk, you don’t have to use raw, you could use store bought or even powdered will work.
White of apple cider vinegar
Cheesecloth (I use some sheer curtain fabric because I hate to throw away and continue buying cheese cloth plus the weave is much smaller and the cheese looks nicer to me. Shhhhh, thats my little secret that I share with you. Go get one of those old curtains out of your linen closet and give it a new home. The liquid goes right through but the solid stays perfectly, much better than cheese cloth.
A food thermometer or you could just
heat your milk to between 180 to 185 F. If you do not have a thermometer, just watch it to the moment right before the milk boils. Add 1/4 cup of vinegar to your pot
give it a gentle stir
You will start to notice the solids separating from the liquid. This is the curd and they whey (just like in Little Miss Muffet).
Put a strainer inside a bigger bowl to catch the whey and place your cloth in it.
pour everything in your pot into the lined strainer (with the bowl under it)
twist the cloth to squeeze out the liquid. Before all the liquid is out I open the cloth and salt the cheese. If you wait until all the liquid is out it is harder to get the salt in because the cheese becomes somewhat solid. You can tie off the cloth with a string and hang it to drip but with this cloth it will all come out with a few twists of the cloth. Put your drained cheese into whatever mold you like and refrigerate over night. Enjoy.
