Cheesemaking is Whey Fun!

Yes, I had to start with a pun. Although the whey actually gets tossed. Sorry whey!

You heard it right. I made my own cheese. That seems like a task doesn't it? Well it is, but making small batches at a time, its not very hard. It does take time and lots of patience before the finished product can be enjoyed, but to me it is worth every bit of it. I like the idea of knowing I made it myself, I know whats in it and that it is fresh and healthier. Yes real cheese, not Velveeta or chem-veeta, but yes even I admit that stuff is tasty. But as I always say sometimes things that taste too good, are too good to be true. I also like learning the process involved in making the foods I eat. I have more of a passion for cheese now that I know how its actually made. I am definitely becoming a cheese-foodie. I love gouda, colby, feta, brie, ricotta, marscapone, mozzarella, to name a few.

My first batch is a farmhouse cheddar made from regular grocery store gallon milk. When I get the process down, I plan to switch to organic cows milk, maybe even goats milk, which would make a creamer richer cheese. You can also pack the curds with nuts, herbs and berries to make a cheese ball of sorts. I might use pecans, dried cranberries, etc. However, you do have to research what is good to add, that will not ruin the curing process.

Here are pictures of every step of the process and I will also explain each step and the ingredients used to make cheese, because most of them are not things we keep around in cabinets like sugar and salt, so you might not be familiar with them.

Rennet: is a complex of enzymes produced in any mammalian stomach, and is often used in the production of cheese. Rennet contains many enzymes, including a proteolytic enzyme (protease) that coagulates the milk, causing it to separate into solids (curds) and liquid (whey). 

Calcium Chloride: is sometimes added to processed milk to restore the natural balance between calcium and protein in casein for the purposes of making cheeses, such as brie.

Mesophilic Direct Set Culture:   All cultures use the same basic process: rapidly raising the acidity of the milk by consuming the lactose (milk sugar) and converting it into lactic acid, which disables the already-present bad bacteria and helps the rennet or coagulant to set the cheese. Starter culture also aids in development and preservation of the flavor and body of the cheese during cheesemaking and afterwards, in the aging process.

Mesophilic culture is used for most soft cheeses as well as any hard cheeses that are not heated over 102F... 'meso' means middle and these cultures are great for cheese making where the recipe requires 'middle' temperatures (between 68F and 102F).

Definitions from the internet.

So now to the process and the photos. (It took me about 7-8 hours on one Saturday to make this cheese ready for aging. However, there was a lot of sitting and waiting, so not that I spent that much time actually hunched over the stove.)

1. Pour two gallons of whole milk (or 2 gallons of 1% or skim, with 1 pt. substituted with heavy cream) into a large stock pot. Using a cheese or candy thermometer, heat the milk to 90F. If using Calcium Chloride this is the time to add it and stir the mixture.

2. Once milk has heated to proper temp. then add starter culture (Mesophilic culture in this case, thermophilic is used for other types of cheeses). You can Google for mesophilic or thermophilic cultures or look on Amazon if you are interested in purchasing some. Stir the culture in well and leave the pot where it can stay at its current temps for 45 minutes.

3. Add the rennet. To do this dissolve a tablet (recipe suggests using 1/2 to 1 tablet. I decided to go with a whole tablet to insure cheese firmness, since this was my first attempt at making cheese) in 1/4 cup of cold water. To add the rennet pour dissolved mixture into the milk through a perforated skimming ladle which will strew it into the milk. I used a slotted spoon.  Stir gently from top to bottom to insure evenness of rennet distribution. Finally topstir the milk for one minute to keep the cream from rising back to the top.

Curdling has begun.

4. Cover the container and leave undisturbed for 45 minutes. After this time a nice block of curd will have formed and be swimming in the whey.

5. Here you are supposed to cut the curd into cubes about 1/2 inch cubed. However, I struggled with making them cubes. I used the longest knife I had and was just glad I was able to cut them up into smaller pieces.

 

6.  Place the pot into a sink filled with hot water and bring the temp of the water slowly up to 100F. (by raising the temp 2 degrees every 5 minutes). This should take 30 minutes. This is what the instructions said, but not what I found to be the case. I left the pot cool, but it never really got down below 100F anyways, so I tried this step, but then eventually skipped it. I assumed the curds were as small as they were going to get. Making the curds shrink was the main goal of this step.

7. Cover the pot when done and let the curds settle for 5 minutes. Pour the curds into a cheesecloth-lined colander. (Finally actually using cheesecloth for its namesake) Tie the cloth around the cheese and hang the bag of curds to drain in a convenient spot for an hr. I put a plastic container underneath my cheese to catch the whey.

8. Pour the drained curds into a bowl and break them up gently with your fingers or a spoon. Make the cheese look like FETA. Mix in table salt 1/2 tbsp. at a time (1 tbsp total).

 

9. Pack the curds firmly into the lined cheese mold (comes with kit, that I will put a link to below, or you can purchase mold on the net, probably on Amazon). Fold the remaining cheesecloth over top neatly. Apply 10 lbs of pressure for 15 minutes. I used my crock-pot bowl as weight, it was approx. 10 lbs when weighed. I also had some disks from a weightlifting set, that were 10 lbs, but couldn't find them so this was the best I could do.  Turn the cheese over after this time and increase the pressure to 20 lbs and let sit for 12 hours. I then added another 10 lbs by putting a full glass casserole pan of brownies below the crock-pot. I had to get creative about where I could find 20 lbs of weight that I wouldn't mind sticking on top of my cheese, so I used dishes. However, for the last step, I took the cheese out of the mold and put it on a plate and then placed the weight on top, because I felt like the cheese in the mold was too low in the mold to actually feel the brunt of the weight to drain its remaining whey properly. 

10. Carefully peel away the cheesecloth as to try not to rip the cheese surface. Then air dry the cheese at room temperature on a wooden cutting board (butcher block or cheese serving board will also do). Air dry the cheese until a nice rind has developed and its surface is quite dry. This takes from 3-5 days, depending on the weather. While drying the cheese turn it several times a day so moisture will not collect on the bottom.

 

11. Cheese waxing! Bought a small block of red cheese wax from cheesemaking.com it was about $11 with shipping. It can be reused indefinitely. It just needs to be peeled away from the cheese and remelted down. So it was definitely worth its cost. However, wax is a fun thing to clean up (if you have ever made candles or soap you know what I mean).

 

12. I chose to use a glass pot inside my stock pot for easy clean-up later. I used a double boiler method, because you should never put wax directly on an open heat source. If you use a glass or ceramic pot, versus a metal pot, then you can microwave the pot later to heat up the wax residue and then use a paper towel to wipe it off. Obviously you cannot microwave a metal pot, so that is why glass and ceramic are best. Otherwise if you want to use a metal pot, you might want to find a pot you don't particularly care about and make that your designated waxing pot. You can just let the wax re-harden in the pot and put a lid on it, store it and pull it back out whenever you need it. I used the ceramic pot, because I didn't have a metal pot worth sacrificing to the cause for an indefinite amount of time. When I was done I poured the wax into another pot lined with parchment paper and let it re-harden there. Then I gathered the parchment paper together at the end to close it and secured it with a rubber band. I stuck it away in a drawer for later use. It will just release right from the parchment paper without any waste.

Cheese has been waxed. Now for the waiting game. In 1-2 months I will have a nicely aged cheddar. We will have to wait and see if my first cheesemaking attempt was successful. The hard part is the waiting, but knowing that I did something most wouldn't even imagine doing themselves, is worth the effort. I like that my cheese contains a limited amount of ingredients; I know what all of the ingredients are and what their purpuse is, so I know my cheese will be healthy. This is just one more step in trying to go a little bit more off the grid. Someday, if I ever have goats again (I did when I was in high school, but never drank their milk or used it in cooking- I had Alpine Mountain Goats- 3 to be exact), then maybe I will be able to control the whole cheesemaking process from start to finish. That is a dream of mine.

 

www.cheesemaking.com

The place to find all things cheese-making. Its a smaller company that has been making cheese and teaching about cheese-making for years and you should support them.

Come find me in 2 months to try out my cheese with me.

A Pictorial of Wild Edible Delicousness to Wet Your Appetite for Spring/Summer Foraging

Here are some of the dishes I have tried. I will try to find more to post about later.

Strawberry Topping on Cheesecake (Wild Strawberries, but not the Duchesnea indica variety that is not very palatable)

Wintergreen Chocolate Chip Ice Cream (Gaultheria procumbens)

Wild/Concord Grape Jelly  - mixture from my gardens and my foraging (Vitis labrusca and riparia)

Wild Ginger Ice Cream (with Chocolate Chips- Asarum canadense)

Serviceberry Tarts (Amelanchier rotundifolia)

Golden Raspberry Jam (Rubus idaeus)

Foraging for Wild Edibles

Go to the grocery store and buy a package of raspberries or blueberries for $3-4, or find them locally in season for free? First, why it is not good to buy fruit out of season and second how to eat locally, in season by foraging for wild edibles.

If you have a mid-winter hankering for blueberry muffins, you might just have to put a lid on it. Buying blueberries mid-winter means they are not fresh from Maine, for example, but rather from South America or somewhere else far away where they can be grown off-season. When you buy them you are voting with your dollars to say that it is acceptable to use lots of fossil fuels to ship food to your grocery store half-way across the country or the world. What you should do is pick plenty of blueberries fresh in the summer or at worst buy them from the store or farmers markets then and in any case freeze them for use later. They will last just fine. A trick to make them easier to cook with is to place individual berries on parchment paper on a cookie sheet and freeze them that way and then put them into a container. This way they will not clump together, when frozen and you can pour out just the amount of individual frozen berries you need for your recipe. Another trick is to use an ice cube tray to freeze individual berries.

Mostly, I eat in season. You wont see me with an apple in February or blackberries in March, a fresh tomato in January or a pear in July. Besides its more fun when you can have seasons of eating. I cannot wait for every summer where I get to pick berries. My family and I have a summer tradition of putting fresh berries into plain cereal with sugar. In the fall I love apple picking and all things apple flavored.

So, this blog post is going to be about foraging for wild edibles. This will be the first of many posts on this subject, since this is a lengthy subject. In that regard I think I will break my posts up by season and post at the beginning of each season about that seasons wild edibles and how to ethically harvest them. It will be good for you to know what to look for when each season starts, so you can make the most out of enjoying your local edible flora. I will even try to cover the wild edibles I do not like, so I give a bigger unbiased picture of foraging for wild edibles.

Why do I forage for wild edibles? There are many reasons. First I save money on produce. Secondly, I enjoy Mother Nature`s bounty. Third, I like eating closer to the earth. Fourth, if my food comes from a local park where harmful pesticides and other lawn chemicals are not used then the food can be considered organic and finally if the species I am eating is invasive (like wineberries) I am doing my part to remove their seeds, etc.  from the picture.

First, one package of raspberries, which you can purchase right now at the grocery store (and I would not advise doing) costs about $3-4. I can gather about 10-15 of these size packages in a year and eat them fresh and freeze the rest. That is a savings of about $30-60. It may not seem like much, but every bit helps. A wise man once said a penny saved is a penny earned. Thanks Ben Franklin!

Secondly that package of raspberries may not be organic and grown on a monoculture farm as a hybrid species, instead of growing naturally wild. By foraging for wild edibles I am eating food as Mother Nature intended. It also shows how I can use whats in my own neighborhood to eek out an existence. I think we could all learn something from that, because most of us are so reliant on technology and convenience that we wouldn't know what to do if the power went out or if our grocery store suddenly closed. Any homesteader or survivalist would. That is why I love the show Survivorman.

lesstroud.ca/survivorman/home.php

I think the second also explains number 3 and 4. Eat closer to the earth, eat more plants, and not highly processed plants (like strawberry-flavored skittles, nothing but sugar, chemical dyes and no strawberries anywhere but in the name, lol). Eat the food as mother nature has intended, eat organic. And reason 5 is self-explanatory too.

I think one barrier to eating wild edibles is knowing what to pick and where. I think most people would be surprised that most of these things they can find in their own backyard. I love plants, so its easy for me, but I admit, yes you do have to be a bit of a botanist to know what you are doing. You do not want to eat something poisonous. My thoughts are to start off with a small amount of items to try and to start with plants you know are safe like grapes, blueberries and raspberries. You should be easily able to identify their wild counterparts if you know what the store bought kind look like. Then once you pick a few species to try, try them in small amounts, so if you do happen to get sick it will only be a mild case. Even if a plant is not poisonous, that does not mean some people may not be allergic to them and the only way to know for sure is to try them and find out. So, what is an acceptable size to start with a side dish portion or a 1/4 of a cup.

If I were starting out I would probably make my list of initial things to try look like this:

wild blackberries
wild blueberries
wild grapes
dandelions
wood sorrel (shamrocks)
wild Violet

That is enough things to start and try.  Then you can expand upon that. Find recipes online on sites like:

Hunter Angler Gardener Cook

Then you know they are tried and true and should be safe for you to try and you know the proper applications for the plants you've chosen. For example make jello out of violets, but eat dandelions in a salad, etc.

I also have many books on wild edibles such as these two:

I have tried many recipes from both of these books and I love them.

After deciding which plants to try then decide where to find them and how to harvest them safely. If they are in your own backyard, then no big deal. Just go out there and pick them! However, if you have seen them somewhere else, make sure you are allowed to pick them there. If it is a public park the chances are no one will care if you pick there. I have a park like that by my house where I pick black raspberries, blackberries, cherries and wineberries. However, make sure the places you go are not being heavily treated with pesticides. You should know because most places will put up little yellow signs like these below when they are spraying areas.

 

Then if the area is a state park or wildlife refuge, make sure to read the regulations on foraging. In wildlife refuges foraging is generally not allowed, because the wild edibles are there to support wildlife, not humans :). However, there are a few refuges where this is not the case because they have over abundance of something like blueberry bushes, so it may be allowed. This just goes to show you should check your local state park and refuge regulations closely to know what is allowed. In some refuges like the one I used to work at, it was illegal for folks to harvest fiddlehead ferns and those regulations were enforced. They may have also been enforced for other plants, but this is the one example that I am aware of. Again, check your state park because they can differ from state to state, based on their mission, whether recreation or natural preservation.

If foraging is allowed on a property it is still always a good idea not to over harvest and leave some for other potential foragers and hopefully in the long run if we all practice this, we will always leave some for the wildlife.

These are the key things I wanted to mention for now. Here I leave you with a link to winter wild edibles of the Northeast. Go have some fun out in this cold blustery winter and find yourself some good eats. Always remember though the wildlife you will enjoy on your foraging trips will also enjoy the food you have foraged, so leave some for them as well. Especially now that it is winter and for some animals food can be harder to find in this time of year. Later, I will post more about wild edibles when they are in their peak in spring, summer and fall. But here`s a place to start.

10 Winter Wild Edibles

Thanks for reading this long, long post and have fun foraging!