Adventures in Mozzarella-Making

I have been holding on to a June/July 2008 copy of Mother Earth News magazine for, well, two years now because of a single page. It has directions for 30-minute mozzarella cheese. As you probably know, I am a HUGE fan of fresh mozzarella, and when I saw that this was even remotely do-able, I decided to finally tear it out, recycle the rest of it, and give it a whack.

It turns out to be really easy, after finding a couple of ingredients that were not hard to find at all, even in this po-dunk town, and finding a couple of websites for moral support and to supplement instructions and photos of the process, and how to approximate since I didn't have a thermometer that could measure as low as 55 through 175. Ricki the "Cheese Queen" has wonderful step-by-step photos, and a kind of shortcut using a microwave that I appreciated. And I found another link that had some helpful steps and photos.

30-minute Mozzarella

1 gallon milk (Mine's from Albuquerque, the closest to local milk, that I bought at the local hippie co-op. I also used whole milk.)

1 1/2 tsp. powdered citric acid dissolved in 1/4 c. cool water (this can be bought at a grocery store in the baking/canning supplies)

1/4 tsp. liquid vegetable rennet diluted in 1/4 c. cool water (I found this at the local co-op after asking. It was in the dairy case in a small box. I found animal rennet tablets at a different market, but had to keep looking: "complex of enzymes extracted from the stomachs of cows, often veal calves" *shudder*)

Begin heating the milk and when it's 55 degrees, mix in the citric acid solution and stir it thoroughly.

Continue heating it until it's 88-90 degrees. It will begin to curdle. If you don't have a thermometer, you can approximate this (in a super-hygenic way) by sticking your clean finger into the warm milk. If it's starting to thicken, you're good. Once it's 88-90, add the rennet solution and gently stir for 30 seconds. You'll see it's starting to curdle. This is good.

Continue heating until it's 100-105 degrees. Again, if you can't measure the temp scientifically, you'll see the curds begin to pull away from the walls of your pot:

The Cheese Queen has you note the clarity of the liquid, which is whey, and the color, which has a kind of greenish yellow tint (yum!). I guess if it's still white or milky, you need to keep heating. Once it reaches this temp/ stage, you can turn the heat off. At this point, I scooped out all the solids (curds!) and put them in a sieve over a bowl to let the whey continue draining out:
Now the instructions in Mother Earth News got really complicated at this point (it involved heating the whey to 175 degrees and dipping the curd into it with a ladle to heat it through until it's melty and stretchy), so I followed Cheese Queen, who said to put your curds in a bowl and microwave it for a minute. You'll see that more whey has separated out, so pour it off, and zap it for another 30 seconds. Repeat the draining of the whey and sprinkle in some salt. I used some fine popcorn salt, maybe a 1/2 -1 tsp. and nuked it for 30 more seconds.

When it was done, I dumped it out on the (clean) counter as you can see on the left:
You get to start kneading/stretching it and getting it all smooth and cheese-looking. Since it's so hot right now from the microwave, you'll want to start pressing and folding the smooshy curd pile with a wooden spoon:
And after a bit, even though it's still pretty warm, you can use your hand to press and fold the cheese like kneading bread dough. **revision: Apparently draining out all the whey and stretching the curd too much results in a tough cheese. Mine's a little less than ideal now that it's had a day in the fridge, so next time, I'm going to follow the technique described in steps 7-14 in the link from chow.com. When I try it again, I'll post!**
When it's smooth, you can roll it into a ball and YOU'VE JUST MADE CHEESE!!!!
I immediately sliced up some tomato and avocado and basil. And then glutted myself.
Cheese Queen says to store it in cold water in the fridge for up to a week.