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Cheese-making tips and tricks

We have lots of milk again, since Molly calved, but we never had much time for cheese-making, so here are a few tips that you might find useful when you need to make cheese in a hurry.


Make one big cheese rather than several smaller ones
We realised that most of the time involved in cheese making is all the heating and stirring.  We decided to make the largest possible cheese, using our 10 L and 7 L pots at the same time.  When the curd was ready in both pots, I scooped it into our largest mold to make one giant cheese, then there was only one cheese to look after until it was ready to wax.


Save time fishing the spoon out of the pot by securing it to the handle with a twisty tie
You don't want to know how often this has been a problem!


Sterilise your pot just before you start, so you know its clean and you have a warm pot to heat the milk in
I sterilise the pot by putting a little water in the bottom, sitting it on the largest burner with the lid on, until it boils and the steam can sterilise the entire pot.  Then I can just tip out the water and the pot is ready to use.


Preheat milk from the fridge in a sink of hot water while doing other chores
Its easy to ruin a pot of milk heating over a burner while you are efficiently multi-tasking (ie distracted), a double-boiler is ideal, but I don't have a big enough pot to double-boil the 10 L pot!  The next best thing is to fill the 10 L pot with milk and sit it in the sink, and then fill the sink with hot water.  In about 20 minutes the milk will be close to the cheese-making temperature (you could also use boiling water to get even closer) and the last few degrees can be added using the stove.

Use a digital timer will remind you when its time to do the next step
Cheese making involves so much waiting, I often get distracted on other tasks, but this little timer has saved me many times.  Its great for making hard boiled eggs too! 


Do you have any cheese making tips and tricks to add?

If you want to know more about house cows, my eBook is available for purchase on Scribd.  Its only $4.99, and it includes lots of information about keeping a house cow in Australia.  There's more details about the eBook on my house cow eBook blog.  If you don't want to go through all the Scribd/paypal effort, just send me an email on eight.acres.liz at gmail.com and I can arrange to email it to you instead.

Comments

  1. Oh gosh that cheese looks awesome. I have only made ricotta, but really want to try feta as well.

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  2. My only tip is, make sure you make more than you can eat so you can give it to all your drooling blog readers ;)

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  3. I haven't dabbled in cheese making yet. Only quark. Now that we are milking goats, we've begun to think about cheese so I read this post with interest. Maybe next year we'll be milking two at the same time and I might have enough milk to spare. As for the spoon, does it need to be in the pot for some reason? We just rest ours across the handle of the pot.

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    Replies
    1. well I am paranoid about putting it on the bench top as its not usually clean, so safest place for it is in the pot! And then it doesn't drip milk anywhere either!

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  4. Great tips Liz. My only other tip is that I sterilise my spoon and utensils in the pot at the same time. I am looking at making some goats cheese in the near future, it will be a first try so we will see how it goes.

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    Replies
    1. yes good point, I usually have all the utensils in the pot when I heat it.

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  5. My mouth is watering, there is nothing like making your own cheese, the flavor is amazing. Love your post. Thank you for sharing with the Clever Chicks Blog Hop! I hope you’ll join us again next week!

    Cheers,
    Kathy Shea Mormino
    The Chicken Chick
    http://www.The-Chicken-Chick.com

    ReplyDelete
  6. I'd love to have the resources to make such things. Maybe one day! :) Lovely blog. Kathryn x

    ReplyDelete

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