Home Cheesemaking - no special equipment required! | Easy Farmhouse Cheddar (Hard Cheese) Recipe

hey guys this is jim of from scratch farmstead and today we're gonna make some cheese we're gonna make a hard cheese and if you've never made a hard cheese before this is the place to start this recipe is so simple you can use all the equipment you already have at home you don't need a cheese cave and so let's get into it we're going to make a farmhouse cheddar so our family started making cheese several years ago and we started with just a basic mozzarella recipe and that was great we still make mozzarella today and love it at one point we wanted to try and start making a hard cheese and so we looked at some different recipes out there saw what the options were and it can get pretty complex when you're talking hard cheeses there's lots of different cultures involved there can be lots of equipment needed time for aging things like that and so we wanted something really basic just to start with so at the time we were kind of living in amish country and the amish are super resourceful people right and they live off the land and so we got some inspiration from them they make this really basic farmhouse cheddar recipe and so what you use to culture it is just either yogurt or kefir which likely you have one of those on hand from there you don't need any special equipment or anything like that the only things that i picked up is a good good thermometer and then a curd spoon you could just use a slotted spoon but i found it really helpful to have a spoon specifically designed to scoop curd it's just more efficient but as far as like a cheese press goes i'll show you how to basically rig one up with supplies that you probably already have on hand in the kitchen and then you don't even need a cheesecake you just have to find a cool spot in your house to keep your cheese and age it for for about a month and that's it and so we're gonna get right into it and make some farmhouse cheddar so as i'm pouring milk into the stockpot i'll mention here that we will have the full recipe for this farmhouse cheddar on our website from scratchfarmstead.com and i'll also include a link below and this is a really forgiving hard cheese recipe so if this is your first time attempting making hard cheese you are in the right spot so to start you'll want to find the freshest milk that you can and so check with local farmers or local sources of milk if you can we we actually use the milk from our family milk cow and so that was milked probably either that day or the day before and so as fresh of milk as you can find and really as raw or unprocessed milk as you can find is your best bet for really any cheese making look for milk that is not ultra pasteurized there's different levels of pasteurization that milk goes through and you want as low of pasteurization as possible you can also try and find milk that's non-homogenized meaning that the cream separates from the milk itself and you can see that's actually what i'm doing here as i pour in about half the jar of milk and then shake up the rest i'm actually shaking in the cream just to make sure it's all mixed together good so start with the freshest milk that you can find for your cheese making all right so all the milk is in the stock pot now we're going to place the thermometer in the pot i like to use a 12-inch stick thermometer with a clip on it so it clips easily to the side of a pot you don't need a ton of equipment for this recipe but i will link any of the equipment that i use below so you can see what that is all right so we're going to move the stock pot to a stove top burner and put it on about a medium heat and you're going to be heating the milk up to 90 degrees and so stir it regularly throughout this process it will take some time you just want it to heat up slowly there's no need to put the heat up too high and get it heating up too fast just let heat up slowly to 90 degrees and stir it regularly i didn't mention this earlier but i'm using two and a half gallons of milk for this farmhouse cheddar recipe that's really based on my stockpot and that's about as much as it will fit you can use more milk or less milk i'd recommend using at least two gallons to get kind of a good solid wheel of cheese as a final product but anywhere from two to five gallons or even more would do fine and so while that milk is heating up you're going to get your next step ready which is adding your yogurt or your kefir in as a culture to the milk once it hits 90 degrees so i'm using here a third cup of kefir or you can use a third cup of yogurt you'll just want to use plain yogurt and so pour that into a measuring cup and then you'll want to add a couple teaspoons of milk to dilute that yogurt or kefir and so what i usually just do here as you can see is pour what kind of settles in at the bottom of the milk jugs that i already used and then you're gonna mix that together good then we're gonna jump back over to our milk that has been warming up on the stove top and as you can see it's right about at 90 degrees now so i'm going to go ahead and pull that off the stove top so here's where we have our diluted either yogurt or kefir ready and we have our 90 degree milk so i'm gonna give it a little stir first and then pour that into the pot and i'm gonna stir the milk in the pot right away for about a minute and you really just want to mix that up good get that yogurt the cultures from there going and really incorporated well into the milk fully so give that a good stir for about a minute and then after that you're gonna take your spoon and your thermometer out put the cover back on and just let that milk sit there undisturbed for about 10 minutes going a little longer doesn't hurt it but you want to go for at least 10 minutes and really let that culture set in and establish in the milk and while you're waiting for your milk to culture you can start getting your rennet ready which is the next step so rennet is what coagulates the milk it turns it from a liquid to a solid so i like to use welco wren rennet tablets that is the most natural form of rennet i've found for home cheese making i've used three tablets here you'll want to check on the rennet packaging that you're using and see what the recommended dosages are but three has seemed to be the right amount for two and a half gallons for what i'm using i like to use about a quarter cup of water per tablet so i have about three quarters cups here and you can see as the tablets just sit in the water they start to dissolve then i go in there with a spoon and just start breaking them up and turn them more into a powder form until they are fully dissolved you want to give them a really good stir after that and make sure that they are fully dissolved into the water i should also note that you'll want to use unchlorinated water for this all right so it's been about 10 minutes and throughout the rest of this process you'll want to try and maintain a consistent 90 degree temperature on your milk the easiest way i've found to do this is to create a double boiler system if you have a double boiler that's great i didn't have one so i just use a larger stock pot fill it about a quarter to a third full with just warm tap water then place my stock pot with the milk in it inside of that we're going to take off the cover of the pot put the thermometer back in just to check where things are at give the milk a little bit of a stir here and then i'm going to go ahead and add in my rennet and you'll want to add in the rennet pretty quickly just pour it in and then stir it again for about a minute somewhat vigorously you want to just make sure that rent it especially gets stirred in quickly and is fully mixed into the entire pot of milk and so stir that as thoroughly as you can and you're just going to want to let this sit undisturbed for probably a good 20 to 40 minutes the curd is actually separating from the whey in this process and so you'll know that it's done when you have what's called a clean break and a clean break is essentially when your curd is set and so you test that by taking a finger and just inserting it at about a 45 degree angle into the top of your pot and then pulling it straight up if the curd breaks cleanly then you know you've achieved a clean break now i tested it here once and it wasn't quite where i wanted to be i could tell the curd was still setting up a little bit and so i left it sit there for another five to ten minutes and then i came back did another clean break test and we had a good clean break there so after that you're going to cube your curd into roughly one inch chunks so take your long bladed knife and start cutting vertical slices through the curd roughly one inch apart so i start kind of top to bottom and then i go left to right so once you have that checker pattern sort of cut on your curd vertically then you'll want to start slicing your curd horizontally and so you just do the best you can with with this step it's hard to tell exactly what you're cutting but i just hold the knife kind of horizontally and slice roughly every one inch or as as best as you can judge start with one direction switch to the other side and then i try and make sure i go in there at kind of all four side of cutting up the curd you're not going to get everything but during the next step when you're starting to stir your curd you can just continue to break up any long or large pieces that you find that didn't get cut during this step so now we're going to move on to stirring the curd and so what you've done with cutting the curd into cubes is created more surface area so the curd can release its way more efficiently to start the curd has sharp edges to it like a cube or a square but as you go the curved cubes are going to lose their sharp edges and they're going to have more rounded edges and that's because that curve is releasing its way and it's actually shrinking up a bit and so you know that the curt is ready once it has the consistency of about a poached egg squeeze it feel it once it has that poached egg consistency then you know that you're ready okay so i've got the curd where i want it and so i'm gonna start getting my cheese press ready and we're gonna get ready to start scooping out the curb and putting it into the cheese press i will mention here if you do not have a official cheese press you can totally make your own with equipment that you probably already have at home our stockpot came with a colander and that's what i'm using here i just have a colander basically that i'm lining with a thin smooth cotton cloth i'm just putting that inside the calendar as flat as i can then i have a strainer that i put on top of a large bowl to catch the whey and i just line that with a cheese cloth and so now i switch to my curd spoon for scooping out curd i'm going to add a couple scoops into my cheese cloth and strainer about the size of a baseball i've found is about the easiest quantity to handle and so once i have a couple scoops in my cheesecloth i'll gather it up and just start applying some light gentle pressure to the curd that's in the cheesecloth and start squeezing out some of the extra whey that's in there you don't want to squeeze this too hard and remove all the way at this point it's just to get some of the excess way out and then you've got your cheese ball and i just kind of plop that into the cheese press and so i'm going to keep going through the same process here until i've got about two or three good sized balls of cheese into the cheese press [Music] and an important part of making this cheese is adding salt and incorporating salt kind of thoroughly throughout your your cheese as you're making it so once i have two or three balls of cheese or curd in the cheese press i'll sprinkle in about a tablespoon of salt on top of those and i'll just start working in the salt with my fingers into the curd and just really pressing it in there good getting it all around is also kind of a time to start kind of forming and shaping your cheese a bit and then we're just going to keep going scooping out curd squeezing it out with the cheesecloth getting out some of that excess whey adding some more balls of curd or cheese to your press and again you'll want to stop after every couple balls of cheese and sprinkle in a tablespoon or so of salt and really work that in with your hands as as good as you can and what the salt is going to do is one add really good flavor and taste to your cheese but it's also going to help that cheese dry out thoroughly and so early on when i was making this cheese i think i didn't add enough salt and it took a lot longer for it to dry out but if you add enough salt and have it really well incorporated into your cheese that's really going to help your cheese dry out quickly and evenly [Music] so once all the curd is scooped out of your pot and you have it all in your press and you you've thoroughly salted everything you're gonna take your follower and add that to your cheese press so in this case i just have another pot that i use that fits pretty snugly inside the colander that i use as a base for the press so what i'm going to do here is you can actually see a decent amount of whey has already collected in the cookie sheet that i have below the press so i'm just going to dump out the way that's currently in the cookie sheet just to kind of start fresh with the press so you'll want to apply just enough weight to your press so there's a steady flow of weight coming out the bottom of your press you don't want to apply too much weight too soon just enough pressure so you have that steady flow of whey so i'm gonna place a couple of quart sized jars filled with fermenting kombucha we just had sitting out on our countertop on the top of my press as i go if i need more weight i just stack some books on top of that okay so once your cheese is in your press you're just gonna let it sit for 12 hours so a quick side note while that cheese is sitting in the press you're going to have a lot of whey left over in the cheese making process and whey is a really awesome food filled with protein and vitamins and minerals so don't just discard your way and pour it down the drain we like to hold on to some of it for using in our cooking as like a stock or you can also just pour it into your garden or a landscape area and use it as a fertilizer all right so after 12 hours here i'm going to come back to the cheese press and you could see how much whey has collected there in the cookie sheet below the press and so i'm just going to take that over to the sink and dump out a little bit away that was in there first and then i'm going to take off the follower uncover the cheese then you're going to flip the cheese and this is just to make sure that the cheese is draining in the press nice and evenly i like to make sure that the cloth that the cheese is wrapped in is sitting really flat that makes for a much prettier nicer looking cheese without all the ripples in it and so spend a little bit of time getting it nice and flat so after you've done that take your cheese put it back into the press put the follower back on top add your weight back on and i like to give it a little press down just to make sure everything is settled in there good and i am just going to add a little bit more weight so i'm going to add a couple books on top of my press this is just something that i've gotten a feel for after making this cheese for a while if you apply too much weight to it then you can almost squeeze out too much whey and then end up with a really hard cheese in the end and so i like to just add weight kind of gradually and not apply too much too early in the process all right so once that cheese is back into the press you're going to let it sit for another 12 hours so it's going to be in the press 24 hours total you can see there's not much weight dripping out of it at this point but there definitely was a little bit of weight that came out in that second 12 hour period all right so after 12 hours we're gonna come back to our press remove the weights and the follower and unwrap our cheese and you can kind of see what it's like here all the curd has formed into one solid wheel of cheese at this point it is pretty soft still the next thing we're gonna do is place it onto a drying rack with some sort of cloth on top of it we just use a cloth napkin you're just gonna let your cheese sit covered on that drying rack for about two to maybe even five days depending on how long it takes to dry out every day you should rotate it a few times so three four five times keep rotating that cheese so it's drying out evenly and you can totally just do this on your countertop so you don't forget about it so here's me flipping the cheese here you can kind of see it's starting to turn a little bit of a deeper yellow color which typically happens as it dries out and one thing to mention here is that during this drying out process it's a very normal thing for your cheese to form mold on it so it will form kind of a fuzzy mold on the surface and that's just a normal part of the cheese making process and so what you do when that happens is just to take a cloth with some apple cider vinegar and wipe those spots down you can wipe down the whole cheese good but make sure especially the moldy spots you wipe down really good with apple cider vinegar clean off the cheese and it will be good to go so after the cheese is pretty dried out and it's starting to form kind of a harder rind on the outside or after it started to form mold on the outside of it and then you've you've cleaned it off with the apple cider vinegar then your cheese is ready to get its final outer coating or rind which you do by adding a layer of butter to the outside and so a couple hours before i do this i like to take our butter out of the fridge so it's more at room temperature and then it's really soft and easy to spread i should mention too that you can also use lard for this process butter is definitely my my preference to use but you can totally use lard as well and so you can see i'm just going to take some good sized dollops of butter and put it on the cheese and just start working it around and spreading it around the cheese with my fingers so wherever there's big cracks or crevices i try and hit those areas first and really work the butter down into those cracks and you'll really want to make sure the whole cheese is encased in butter so make sure you get every little nook and cranny and everything get in there really good with the cheese work it in there so i start with one side flip it and then butter the other side fully and then i kind of put it up on its side and make sure that i go around and do all the edges really good too and so you'll have a good layer of butter or lard with whichever you choose to use to coat your cheese and that coating is what's going to allow your cheese to age really good without drying out too much it's worth mentioning too that occasionally you will have a moldy spot that forms on your cheese during the aging process again if you miss a spot with your coating of butter that can happen and so you just wash down that area with apple cider vinegar and reapply a fresh coat of butter on top and your cheese will be good to go so once you have your cheese fully coated in butter or in lard you're going to put your cheese away to age it so you just put it back on the drying rack put the cloth back on top of it and you're going to let it age anywhere from about three weeks to five weeks we've usually found that four weeks is the right time for our setup so while it is aging you'll want to flip it about every day and because the aging time is so short with this cheese you really don't need like an official cheese cave setup just allowing it to age in your basement would be fine we've often found that if we put in our basement sometimes we forget about it so oftentimes we'll actually just age it on our countertop in our kitchen and it ages just fine so that's the process for making farmhouse cheddar we use this cheese for about everything it has a great taste great texture to it it doesn't melt quite the same like a soft cheese would but we often use it in combination with the mozzarella that we make on either a sandwich or on pizza or something like that and they make a great combination together we also just often cube this cheese and add it on top of like a soup or a porridge or even like a fresh garden salad it just adds a really great flavor and texture grates really well and you could even use it as a parmesan alternative so that's our farmhouse cheddar recipe if you do have any questions drop them in the comments below and thanks for stopping by the farmstead today and we'll see you next time [Music]

Channel: From Scratch Farmstead

Views: 817,103

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Id: pbRao72jTKI

Length: 21min 12sec (1272 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 17 2022