You're in Steve's kitchen, today is all
about curds and I mean those squeaky curds that squeak like a mouse in a
cheese factory, that are perfect for Canadian style poutine and I'm going to
be making some poutine, that's why I need the curds. You really want delicious
squeaky curds when you're making poutine at home and it isn't that difficult to
make, so I'm going to show you now how we can take a really good quality milk and
this is a full cream milk, no rubbish sort of partially creamed or half cream.
I don't even know what they call it, we so rarely use it. A full cream milk and
we're going to turn this into squeaky curds. Now I don't need a whole lot of cheese
curds so I'm taking two litres of full cream milk and that's approximately a
little over four pints. Now different milks will give you different qualities
of curd, if you find the milk that you've got isn't super good you might want to
add a tiny amount of calcium chloride in with the milk. I'm actually going to use
sodium chloride basically simple uniodised salt, calcium chloride will
actually give you a slightly firmer curd. So if you've got a poorer quality milk
that's the reason you use it. So for two liters of milk I'm using a teaspoon of
sodium chloride or regular salt. Now if you're on a low-sodium diet this can be
left out altogether. Now I've added a couple of tablespoons of hot water just
to dissolve the salt down and we can add that in with our milk and give it a
little stir through but the first thing we've got to do is heat this milk up and
when we talk about heating the milk during cheese-making, it's a little bit
misleading because actually getting the milk to stay under a certain temperature
is actually a little bit harder than heating it. We're only talking about
temperatures about 33 degrees Celsius about 90 Fahrenheit, so a lot of people
will use a double boiler put their pan into some hot waters to bring it up to
temperature. I'm not actually going to do that today, I want to keep this as simple
as possible, I find on a very low heat on the gas, we can bring this up to 32
degrees 33 degrees Celsius about 90 Fahrenheit and we can maintain that heat
fairly easily. Now you can see that just come up to temperature,
I'm going to turn that off we're not going to beat ourselves up by a tiny little
discrepancy. Now here's a step you can decide to leave out if you want, I'm
actually going to add a tablespoon of cultured buttermilk which is a sort of
mesophilic starter, well it is a mesophilic starter and it just adds a
certain flavor into the cheese. Now you would need to leave this in there for
about 40 minutes to allow those flavors to develop, if you decide not to use a
buttermilk or a mesophilic starter you could actually put the rennet in at this
point and skip this altogether. We're just going to pop the lid on that and
I'm going to leave that for about 30 to 40 minutes to allow the culture to ripen.
The only thing you really are going to need for this recipe is some rennet, I've
got a vegetable rennet here, you could use a animal rennet, both will work well.
Generally the instructions on how much to use is on the rennet package whether
you're using liquid or powder. Now the milk has ripened, I'm going to be putting
my rennet in, for 4 pints or 2 liters I'm going to want, for this particular rennet
anyway, about quarter of a teaspoon, so it's a very small amount. You do need to
read sometimes if you're using powders you'll need to dissolve it in some
liquid first. We're going to put that in with our milk and then I'm going to use a
whisk and just gently mix this through for a minute or so to get a nice even
distribution and don't forget at this point our milk still has to be at about
33 degrees Celsius that's about 90 Fahrenheit. We're just now going to cover
it and we're going to leave it for about 40 minutes for the curds to set. Now there's
an old saying 'the proof of the pudding is in the eating' which has got nothing
to do with what I'm about to do but I thought I'd say it anyway. We're going to
take a look now and we're going to see if we can get a clean and break in our
curds, it's been 40 minutes and hopefully the rennet had time to do its work and
when we say a clean break what I mean is get your finger into the curds, you can
see they're set fairly firm, we're just going to bring it under and look at that
we've got a lovely clean break in the curds. So now with our curd set what I'm
going to do is take a knife or a thin palate knife and I'm just going to
push it down into the Curds and I'm going to cut, I'm cutting the curds up into
approximately inch sizes. So I'm just going to work my palate knife across and
then I'm going to take the knife again and I'm going to go across the opposite
direction. So I'm getting nice cubes of curd, I want to take the palate knife at
an angle now and the same thing I'm going to cut, I'm going to slice
diagonally across the curds. So hopefully what this does if you haven't got a
proper curd cutting tool, is to break the curds up into small cubes and then I'm
going to turn my pan and I'm going to do it from the the opposite side. The curds
here, if I lift a little piece out, they're ever so light and creamy and they're
still full of lots of whey, so we want to try and help force this out of the curd.
Our Curds and whey temperature has dropped just a little bit, it's about 31 and a half
degrees Celsius. Now we want to start to bring this up the temperature, needs to
be around about 37 degrees Celsius, that's about a hundred degrees
Fahrenheit. So I'm turning my heat back on but really very low and if you want
to you can do this in a double boiler but what we're going to do is just start
to mix, these are beautiful thick curds, really dense, very good curds that I've
got from this milk and whilst we're mixing it we're just going to be
checking the temperature. Now I don't want it to go much above a hundred
degrees Fahrenheit or 37 degrees in Celsius because all we're effectively
doing here is cooking the curds and I'm using a slotted spoon because I want to
be fairly gentle moving the curds around in the whey. Now when the liquid comes up
to temperature I'm actually going to turn the heat off and I'm going to
continue to stir this very gently for about 30 minutes. So we've continued to
keep the temperature up around about 37 degrees Celsius and you can see now
after thirty minutes of stirring the curds themselves have got a lot
smaller we've got a lot more whey in the pan. So now we've cooked the curds and I
loosely say cook because as you know the temperatures are not that hot, I can put
my hand in there and it's not going to burn at all. What we need to do now is
separate out the curds and the whey. I've got a colander, it's got some cheesecloth
in it. Now if you're doing a bigger batch than this you'll probably want to drain
off some of the whey first but I've only got a small batch so I'm going to pour the
whey into the cheesecloth, there you can see all those beautiful curds there, they
look a little bit like popcorn. I'm going to lift up the corners of my cheesecloth,
now the only reason I've done this into a bowl is because I'm going to be
keeping the whey for other recipes, so we're just going to gently squeeze some
of the whey out of the curds. Now what we're going to do is take those curds,
I'm going to put it on to a rack here so that the whey can drip through. Now you
can see the curds trapped inside the cheesecloth and the whey is starting to
drip off but what we're going to do is actually take a board, a cutting board
that's been cleaned obviously and we're just going to lay it on top and then I'm
just going to put a bag on there to give some extra weight. So that little extra
weight on the board is just going to help express more of the whey out because
although we've cooked that now and it is more dense, we want to get the curds a
lot drier than they are and we don't need to go for a long time only about an
hour and what I'm going to do in about 15 or 20 minutes is lift that off and
just check the curds. I may actually cut them and stack them but as this is just
a squeaky curd that we're using for poutine
we're not maturing it or doing anything unusual. You could take this curd by the
way and make a fantastic mozzarella with it, it's the same sort of curd you use but
we're doing this for squeaky curds. Now from the cheese making process you end
up with a lot of this beautiful whey, this shouldn't be wasted, this is great food
by the way for pigs, so if you're not going to rush out now and get yourself a
pig farm you can use this in all sorts of baking, you could
actually use it to make a lovely ricotta cheese as well, whether I might do that
or not I'm not sure but don't throw it away. So what I'm going to do is after
sort of every 15 to 20 minutes for about an hour or so I'm going to unwrap the
cheese, I'm just going to take the cheese cloth off and you can see the curds are
starting to form beautifully. I'm actually just going to
turn this over. Now sometimes people cut the curds in half and stack them, I think
with this thickness I'm not going to worry about that, I'm just going to wrap
it up one more time and you can see underneath here just how much whey is
starting to come out at the bottom of the cheese and I'll just continue this
process for probably about an hour to an hour and a half until I've got the
cheese as dry as I want it. Now because this is a fairly young curd we don't
need to really set it any longer than that, I think this is probably going to
be ready. Now I'm just going to pull back the cheesecloth we're going to lift, look
at that beautiful curd there it's absolutely perfect. Now we'll take that
gorgeous curd, pop it down on the board and now what we're going to do is just
cut this into strips. I'll then just turn the board round and
I'm going to cut these into beautiful little curd cubes like this. So we've got
these beautiful curds now, lovely solid squeaky curds, the last thing I'm going
to do is just put them into a bowl and we're going to take a little salt, just
sprinkle it over the curds. I'm just going to toss them in the salt, so we've
made our lovely curds, now I can give it a try. It's going to taste like a very young
cheese and as I say you could turn this into a mozzarella if you wanted, it's got
a lovely little squeak, this is going to be great in the poutine. Very, very simple
to make, now join me tomorrow because we've got Canada Day coming up and I
thought I'd make poutine in Steve's kitchen, got my curds now, so it's going
to taste great. I'll see you then, be good
