Brad Makes Mozzarella | It's Alive | Bon Appétit

look at that bud there it goes look at you guys oh yeah it's alive oh mr mozzarello all right don't get excited hey guys saying it's alive we're here my beautiful backyard with my beautiful friend cody cody hey everybody uh cheese connoisseur cheese magician cheese mutation i have no idea and as you can be helping me and showing me and we'll be learning together how to make a little bit of a fresh mozzarella cheese yeah let's get started let's get it going [Music] what's up welcome back to cheesing with cheesers oh hey everybody you're joining me man we're so happy to be here we're gonna be doing we're gonna be having a nice little experiment together of uh making some mozzarella cheese yay can't wait dude thanks for having me cody i know you've dabbled with it you know a bit yeah i've done some dibble dabbling i've made ricotta made some fresh cheeses at home hot chicken pot cheese farmer's cheese stuff like that mozzarella's like a little bit more complicated i know so yeah i picked a hard one i've never made mozzarella yeah i think like a lot of people haven't and i also like i feel like people don't really know what cheese is in general like when you think what is cheese cody i'm so glad you asked bradley but now cheese is milk that's been fermented and coagulated coagulated being with the proteins basically yeah there's like knotted up casein proteins and the thing you add kind of like denatures them and they untangle and then they lock together and they kind of gel into like a little pudding kind of like a wiggly kind of pudding incredible no it's crazy and i just want to say i'm not a scientist so none of this i am don't worry about it so i got that covered oh by the way i learned this technique from this amazing book that if you're interested in natural cheese it's called the art of natural cheese making by david asher this technique comes from that book it's very rad very cool very very groovy uh cool so let's warm up some milk yeah let's turn some milk we got this at a just a good spot in connecticut here this is an image it's color huh yeah it's some beautiful jersey milk here now sometimes when you buy unhomogenized milk there'll be a fat layer oh and you kind of have to like shake it up that's delicious oh yeah sweet yum very sweet well it's like the height of summer dude so these these are just like raising on sweet corn happy corn yeah grass is what i meant i'm sorry all right so let's turn this bad boy on all right let's get them on i do not know how to use those things oh and i'll turn this picture we want the equivalent of like medium high heat so i'm going to put this in just in case 90 degrees fahrenheit 90. you know i usually end up around 93 but between 90 and 95. starting on a danger zone yeah i like getting up there a little bit this whole process is basically trying to emulate what happens inside of a baby animal go on baby calf drinks milk right right it's super stoked from the utter from the outer blah blah blah it goes through its uh it goes through all its stomachs it lands in the fourth stomach the stomach acid acidifies the milk but then there's an enzyme in a baby animal's fourth stomach it's marked as rennet and it has a bunch of like enzymes in it that chemical coagulates the milk to make it easier to process and then the stomach is like smooshing it around basically cutting it into curds basically so we're basically emulating that process instead of stomach acids you might use citric acid you might use like laboratory bacteria or lemon people what's your situation yeah you can use vinegar etc like you're basically trying to bring the milk to a certain acidity where in which i've never said out loud before uh it'll stretch you looked like a professor when you said i know we're in i know i felt like a professor it was good man so this is actually getting close we want to stop at like 93. should i dial it down dial it down we'll slowly get up there yeah so let's put it down the way that we're going to acidify this milk is by adding kefir now basically can i open it yes absolutely so kefir greens are basically like a little scoby i don't i forget what scoby stands for symbiotic community of bacteria and yeast yeah exactly whereas kombucha uses kobe to turn you know sugary tea into kombucha this is a similar process where these kefir grains are eating the sugars and milk lactose right and they're converting it into lactic acid right so cody like you were saying we'll let this sit for about an hour right uh maybe take a little bite lunchtime [Music] [Applause] all right so cody we had our hour break now how can we tell that the that the key for the kefir is working uh well you can't really but i mean if you look at the milk it's still very much milk right but you will know beforehand that your kefir is active because it will be thickening the milk that you're feeding yeah yeah um so that was our indicator exactly and now it's just scaling up and it's getting to it's getting comfortable it's spreading the multiply yes yes yes yes yes so we're going to bring it back up like a couple more degrees and then we're going to add the rennet now which is that enzyme from the from the stomach that natural process yeah fourth stomach one tablet like this will coagulate a gallon of milk which is what we have here so i'm just gonna plop it in here plunk what's that water this is water you just gotta crush it up all right completely dissolved yes completely dissolved okay so do you want to do this yeah let me help you okay so basically what you're going to do is you're going to stir in a figure eight pattern and then we're just going to drop this rennet in now this rent it's going to probably work pretty quick so we're done scoop that out of here and let it set yeah and now you want to still the milk or else it'll it'll set while it's swirling and it'll give you like kind of a frosting kind of actually so break the current the crazy thing about this you guys are like this episode sucks so far who's this guy but the thing is we're gonna come back and this whole thing is gonna be full of milk jello that wiggles and is cuttable if nothing else that'll be home run yeah that'll be homerun derby all right let's uh give it i say let's give it let's give it an hour let's go an hour fifteen show and we're gonna do a nice little tour of uh my man cody's van because it's special [Music] whoa they don't make them like this anymore but it smells like maple syrup in here this thing is hot candy booze that's right all right there we go it's a live coding brad on the board on the road that's right that's that's synced up here's your phone yeah i was leaving so i had to come back hey i think i might have left something in there should we take a look at it yeah open it up but i'm excited come on in here wait for kev all right ready kim whoa yogurty looking this is definitely done you can tell just by looking that it's expelled away and it's firm but what you do is called a clean break my hands are very clean you dunk in your finger at a 45 and then you lift your finger straight up and see that oh look at that you get run so what's the move here you always see him do like yes so we're gonna cut it into a chess board so let me show you one and then you can do a million and you can do it fast right you go all right cool so now you're gonna do the other way i'm gonna start in the middle okay checkerboard it gorgeous love that this is very satisfying really satisfying now there's one more cut we're going to do we're going to come in at an angle like this cut them like right in the middle so oh i just stabbed it right in the gut then you twist it around there give it another slice that way and that should probably be good the curd is strong enough that you could probably just start futzing with it now wow nice yeah bigly wiggly so i go down like this and then stir super soft fingers yeah like you'll if you feel them breaking you're going too hard you know if you see them breaking maybe i should stop it's okay basically this is the starting of stirring the curds which you do to expel more whey the whey's not going to end up in the cheese so you're just kind of like condensing the cheese into like pure cheese matter so this is now a hunt for the big boys you're basically looking for the for like the the big old guys that you like cut in properly yeah so like if you look at this now oh it's milk jello oh big boy oh yeah there's a nice big boy oh yeah big boy yeah there big boy oh yeah big boy big boy i like them like that well you want them to be the similar size so they all like ferment at the same rate if you hold on to it and like squish it a little and like let it just fall boom beautiful cut it down to size so now we're just going to stir for anywhere from 15 to 45 minutes oh oh wow and they'll firm as we go yes because they're they're losing more weight you basically want them to to be the texture of like an over medium poached egg when they're done like right now this is like very much over easy yeah they don't let them hang they're gonna chill and they're gonna be like five minutes we'll stir them again five minutes stir them again [Music] all right look they're looking cheese curdy yeah look in real wisconsiny yep this looks like the yolk inside is just gonna pour out right but you want it to like kind of like be a little bit springy all right so now we just now we wait it's waiting no one said geez it's quick nobody said that this one looks pretty good check this one out yeah nice you know so these are pretty much set up we got them at the spot we want them yeah and uh so what's the next move uh now you just let them ferment uh for a couple hours yep uh probably several hours right now i feel like there's probably a much easier way to be able to do this as well yeah the non-fermentation way where we're just going to use lemon juice citric acid to acidify and have it just happen a lot faster and just a little bit it's an easier way it's just a different approach to it yeah and i figured we could uh we just bang them out since we're here on this total this beautiful day and we got a little bit of time you know downtime while it's fermenting [Music] now the important thing uh for this because we're adding lemon juice right to milk is the milk needs to be cold all right cold oh that's a good that's a huge tip tip so what's the ratio here well it's a gallon of milk for a half a cup of lemon juice diluted in two cups of water oh wow okay nice great pour lovely i'm gonna stir pretty briskly gentle emulsification exactly we're basically trying to acidify it without curdling it and now what we're to do is very slowly warm it up hello hi this milk is now as acidic as we would want the milk to be for the the thing so when we add rennet to this it will turn into what we had after like an hour or 15 and probably 15 minutes wow yeah honestly you know if i was going to make monster at home you probably this whole time you had an easier way [Music] that's good let's do some cracks kind of yes please yes dude cool and then remember the 45 degree angle you want to come in you want to get like halfway down this you know the curtain is pretty solid yeah like remember we weren't able to stir like this one made first of the other one it's a lot more forgiving you know yeah like these crazy ever talk nothing wrong with that yeah no not at all we could have wrapped like seven hours ago i know i know i know i know i know but oh then i'm hanging for a minute whatever now let it relax all right so code all right this took a little bit longer than we thought i think maybe next time i'd add more lemon juice but they're pretty good so i think we should just strain them off let me do it okay beautiful fine beautiful now we're gonna let this uh kind of strength yeah strained it's gonna all knit together so we'll come back to this soon and hopefully we'll have a nice little firm loaf firmloaf.com find my resume and headshot there all right now it's formed into a little puck yeah a nice little little mass kind of bind it all together a bit right why don't we give this one a melt test let's see what it looks like yeah this mouth hassle this is an indicator of that you're locked into that right ph level yeah 5.2 5.4 allowing those proteins to kind of stretch and then get nice and stringy exactly and mozzarella and look you can see this one is well you can tell it's got a little yeah yeah look at that huh oh yeah look at that bud there it goes look at you guys oh yeah that's a melts you look how happy he is though it's just like someone took an elephant off his back i didn't think it was gonna work out and then it worked out everybody you guys can't see the crew everybody's like yes cody yeah look the kids are still the kids are like wait cody did it he's our new dad how many mozzarella balls wanna make four ooh that cut nicely yeah okay so i'll stretch one and you salt it and i'll roll it i'm good at that cool beautiful so what we're going to do here is we're going to take our water here so let that core temperature get up there let it get pliable it's probably hot as heaven hot as hell yeah this is definitely there it's like very soft i like this yeah beautiful you don't want to work it too much but i think this is probably ready to roll so what we're going to do is we're just going to fold it over itself so basically the end move here is you're rolling you're tucking it all under itself and then once you get the final one over it you pull this guy around it you can maybe give it a dunk if it's not feeling super workable and then a nice little ball but like that though huh come on mozzarella ball did you get some good salt on there yeah bless it bless it gorgeous get some water look at her look at her hey dude that ain't bad let me tell you what buddy yeah that's good all right chef hey right in the water uh-huh you probably need to get a little bit more hot water it's not good enough yeah here hit me with some salt gorgeous that looks great dude that's awesome we did it give me that yeah oh my god are you kidding me all right when i baked a little bit of bread let's head it down the recipe from the book i got going on oh yeah it's awesome we'll make just a little little quick little appetizer bites let's do it i mean this really worked out i'm really happy with this it's got a little mortadella a little bread that i made a little bougie bologna i see yeah welcome let's try it uh alfresco maybe yeah absolutely oh it's soft it's beautiful the texture on it hmm it's definitely lemony mmm tastes like milk and lemon it's really dank dude the milk is good it's really dank you know i'm dipping come on we earned this today bud we made this this is awesome from milk i know it started as a like two half gallons of milk mmm a little sandwich with the mortadella it was amazing what we're gonna be doing with the one that the fermented cheese same thing we're just waiting for that ph to get to a spot where we can allow it to to string out and so it'll be you know sometimes this takes eight hours sometimes it takes 11. it depends on how active every time is a little different it's a live thing we'll finish that up and make a little cheese maybe i'll try it tomorrow yeah but overall man i think this is an awesome success it was a huge success i think he nailed it man thank you yeah my hands are covered in martha dela but i would want it no other way no other at this point absolutely all right so we had that last batch of the curd all right that curdy cody had set up with me last night the fermentation one where we used the kefir grains and you know late last night it got to the ph that we wanted we had a little sleepover and he helped me form some new mozzarella he's out here we had some coffee this morning and i think he fell back to sleep in his van just taking a little nap i did nothing wrong all right so good you got a little coffee bud weird pairing but so yeah man so this looks great this is our cheese last night from the fermented kefir i think it turned out good i like this little dude that's my favorite it's clean it's very clean and i feel like the the acidity is like in the background but it rides for a long time nice texture i do not taste that lemon at all no well you know what i'm saying like it was certainly present it's kind of like more more focused on the milk i kind of like it better yeah i think i prefer this one too but the lemon one i was also really nice a hell of a lot easier i found this one to have a little bit of a better texture a little bit more of that like very nice milky lactic-y kind of flavor it's like it's more complex and robust and like because it's alive that's right exactly well on that though man thanks again for teaching me how all right and this is awesome buddy you come up again i'll show you how to make the bread and we'll make it again hell yeah so much fun thanks that's that well thanks guys and again i hope you guys make some cheese at home i had a blast cody it was great hanging out and uh yeah bon appetit that was good ah that was good you guys should try some cheese [Music] foreign

Channel: Bon Appétit

Views: 585,630

Keywords: bon app, bon appetit, bon appetit brad, brad bon appetit, brad it's alive, brad leone, brad leone 2021, brad leone mozzarella, brad makes, cody reiss, cody reiss cheese, cody reiss mozzarella, food, fresh mozzarella cheese, homemade mozzarella, how to make fresh mozzarella, how to make mozzarella, how to make mozzarella cheese, it's alive, it's alive bon appetit, its alive, make fresh mozzarella, make mozzarella, make mozzarella cheese, mozzarella, mozzarella cheese

Id: 3XrxSI7mNxc

Length: 16min 52sec (1012 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 12 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/beachsid3]

brad just gives off the best vibes and clearly attracts equally amazing people in the industry - brilliant

[u/speedr123]

Is Hunzi no longer with BA? Someone else made a post about this about a month ago, but all the It's Alive videos from the last two months (starting with Fly Fishing in Montana when they started putting production credits in the description) have no mention of him

[u/titsoutfortheplanet]

Are we just pretending that Molly and Carla didn’t already do this?