Cheese Time (pictures)

I made regular vinegar/Queso Blanc/Ricotta/soft cheese/whatever you want to call it cheese this morning, and decided to take pictures of the process, like I did with the butter making blog post. So here you go!

First, put 1 gallon of milk in a saucepan over medium heat. Stir occasionally.

While you are waiting for that to warm up, get 1/4 cup of Apple Cider Vinegar ready.

Once your milk reaches 180 F degrees,

stir in the vinegar.

If it does not separate pretty quickly, add more vinegar. Once it separates, remove from the heat.

Let it set for 10 minutes.

While you are waiting, get a bowl or saucepan with a strainer lined with cheesecloth.

When the timer is up, pour the cheese through the cheesecloth.

Let it drain for a few minutes. It will be very hot, so be careful.

The liquid left over is whey. You can use in it soups, bread, any kind of baking, etc. OR, feed it to the dogs and pigs :).

Now take the cheesecloth with the cheese in it, twist the top (so the cheese does not fall out) and rinse it under cold water for a couple of minutes. This helps make it tastes better, IMO.

While you are rinsing it, kind of "massage" the cheese with your hand to really rinse it well.

Now put your cheese in a bowl. You can either eat it like this, or flavor it. If I flavor it or not, I always salt it.

This batch I flavored garlic/italian, and these are the seasonings I used.

And this is the cheese seasoned and packaged.

Well I hope you enjoyed that!

Have a good day.

Suriyah