Hi friends and welcome to another cheese-making tutorial today. We'll be making homemade cheddar cheese It might be the most popular cheese in America and it just might be the most popular cheese in the world! If you're new to the channel, welcome consider subscribing and hitting that notification bell So you don't miss a recipe. Come into my kitchen. Let me show you how to make cheddar cheese. Before you begin this recipe be sure to sanitize all of your equipment. You can do this by using the sanitize session in your dishwasher. Or you could also boil most of this equipment in your stockpot for just a few minutes. then take all of your equipment and lay it out onto a very clean dish towel. For more information about cheese-making equipment click the links in the description box below. Take three gallons of pasteurized un homogenized milk and slowly heat it to 85 degrees. Most of the milk is for the cheese, but a little bit will be for the kitty. Just so, you know Yum-Yum isn't, but some cats are lactose intolerant. Be sure to check with your veterinarian before giving your kitty any people food. While the milk is heating to 85 degrees F slowly stir so that the heat is distributed evenly. When the milk has reached the target temperature of 85 degrees Fahrenheit turn off the heat and you'll take 1/4 TSP of mesophilic culture. Sprinkle it on the top of the milk. Allow it to rehydrate for 5 minutes. Once the five minutes have elapsed go ahead and with a top of bottom stirring motion stir in the mesophilic culture into the milk. you'll stir for one minute. Then cover the pot and let the milk acidify for one hour. You can help maintain the temperature of 85 degrees by placing a towel on the pot if you lose a degree or two It's not really the end of the world. But it would be best to keep it as close to the target temperature as possible for the hour. Double-check just make sure the stove is off. You can prepare your ingredients about 5 minutes before the next step. After the hour has elapsed it's time to mix in the ingredients. The first thing we'll do is we will add the calcium chloride. So this is three-quarters of a teaspoon of calcium chloride in a quarter cup of non-chlorinated water. Add it to the milk. Stir for one minute. Be sure to stir with an up-and-down motion. The second ingredient is the annatto. Now I did dilute this. You don't necessarily have to. I've done it both ways. I think if you dilute it, it just spreads a little more evenly into the milk. Just make sure you stir completely and stir well for one minute. A little tip about annatto. It's a great coloring. It doesn't have any flavor though. Then the last ingredient is always the rennet. stir three quarters of a teaspoon into the milk. Stir well using an up-and-down motion for no longer than one minute. Place the lid on the pot and let the curd set for 45 minutes. You can cover it again at this step if you like. See you in 45 minutes! I needed to re-shoot this piece and i used a little less annatto than I did originally, but 3/4 of a teaspoon of annatto will produce a nice orange cheese. Now here's how to check for a clean break take your curd cutter and drop it into the curd and pull it up. The goal is for the curd to break as you bring it up. Just like that! And that's what a clean break looks like. Cut the curds in 1/2 inch choose first vertically then horizontally. All right now it's time to let these curds we'll cover the pot then let them rest for five minutes. See you in five minutes. After the curds have had an opportunity to rest you'll go ahead and turn the heat back on. And we're going to take these curds from 85 degrees F to 100 degrees F over a 30 minute period of time. While this is happening you'll begin to stir the curd Stir it very slowly and very gently, especially in the beginning. Because the curds are still fragile, we don't want them to shatter. But you can just take it nice and easy. You'll have some curds that didn't cut quite as well as others and that's no problem. You can just cut them with the edge of the spoon. I like to call these whale curds. They're too big and they just need to be cut uniformly. Make sure that the temperature doesn't run away from you. You don't want to heat too quickly. You really want this to heat very evenly over the next 30 minutes. There that should help me keep an eye on them. I think that sometimes YumYum spends all of her time trying to figure out how to get to the cheese. She's constantly looking for ways to get to that pot. After the 30 minutes has elapsed your curd should have shrunk to about the size of all peanuts I'd say. They should look about like that. And at this point you can go ahead and turn off the heat. Over the next 30 minutes you're going to stir just a few times. Maybe four or five times. Just watch to make sure that the temperature maintains at 100. And if you wish you can put on the lid in between the times you're stirring. See you in 30 minutes. And just one more stir in the 30-minute cook time. And that's it now you're going to let the curds settle to the bottom of the pot for 15 minutes. The next step is to place a pan in a clean sink and then take your fine mesh colander and place it over and now we'll pour the curds into the colander. You will want to reserve some of the whey for the next step so make sure you have a pan about half full. This pot of whey we're going to use a little later on I think I'm going to use it for caramel this time. And this is the pot I will use for the cheddaring process. Place this one on the stove. You'll need it in a moment. And then finish on the curd nose into the colander. That dumped a little faster than I expected. Here's what you're going to do. You're just going to take the mass and very gently shape it. And then just very gently move it a little more evenly into the colander.Press oh so lightly. In the meantime heat up your half-full pot of whey to 110 degrees F. While I'm doing this I'm going to start reducing this one down for my whey caramel, but that's in another video. Carefully remove this slab and place it on a cutting board. And with a clean knife cut the slab in half. Then very gently place the slabs back into the colander. All righ.t The why in the pot is 110 degrees F and we've placed the slabs back in. Make sure that the colander is not sitting inside the whey because you don't want the slabs to be submerge. This begins the chattering process. We're going to flip these slabs a total of eight times, (every 15 minutes) over the next two hours. Make sure the stove is off. Cover the slabs with the towel and we'll see you in 15 minutes for the first flip. Here we go. Here's the first 15-minute flip. And number eight.Whew! Last one. Here they are. these slabs look great.By the eighth flip, they should have the consistency of like a chicken breast and it''ll be very shiny. The next step is to cut to the slabs into half inch cubes. And then you'll take the cubes and just break them apart into a container. And now it's time to salt the cheese. You will take two and a half tablespoons and sprinkle it over the cheese curds. And then just mill it in with your hands. Mix it very well. It's time to prepare the mold I'm using a three to four pound mold, medium size with a diameter of seven and three-quarters inches. I'll take a number ten cheesecloth and as you can see it has a very loose weave. And you'll just make kind of a wrap for the curds to sit in. And then just take the curds and put them into the mold. Okay, then you'll take the edges of the cheesecloth and just wrap it on top so that all of the cheese is covered Just like that. You'll take the follower and you'll place it on top I'm pretty sure we're going to need a couple of these. We'll start with one. Now we'll set up the cheese press. Try to get the cheese centered into the press just as much as you can. Good. For the first press we're going to press this cheese at 25 pounds for one hour. See you in one hour. Here I wanted to show you something. This is the whey draining from the first press and it's coming in at a pretty good clip. This is just about the way you want it. This is this is perfect and what you should be looking for. Let's see what we have here. I'm expecting just sort of a basket of loosely knit cubes. I don't think it's all together yet. All right, I think this is going to be a beautiful cheese, it's barely knit together but that's about right. You want to be very careful at this stage. Just remove the old cloth so you can work with the new one. Yeah, that's coming along nicely. Alright. Put everything back in its place. It should sink right in. Pull up on the edges so that you can reduce the creases in the cheese. Put the follower back on and some extras. Okay, the wing nuts are tightened down to the level of the press and now we're going to add more weight. We're going to add 40 pounds. Who knew cheese making was such a workout! Here we go. Okay, the second pressing is for 40 pounds for 12 hours. 12 hours later or in my case the next morning. You're going to go ahead and remove it from the press. Oh It's beautiful! Look at that. It's going very well. So you'll remove it from the cheesecloth and we're going to press it this time without the cheesecloth, it'll be fine and my goal is to prevent the wrinkles that the cheesecloth can do and that should take care of it. It's time for the third press we're going to press it at fifty pounds for another 12 hours. Oof! Here it is. Twelve hours out of the third press and then you'll put it on a drying rack and you will flip it every 12 hours and you will leave it here until it's dry to the touch. I would say two to three days. And once it's dry to the touch vacuum seal the cheese. Then let the cheese age for three to six months at 54 degrees. Make sure that you turn the cheese over weekly. See you in three to six months. All right! five months ago today this beautiful cheddar cheese was born and I know I said three to six months... I wanted to hold out for six months, but I just decided I didn't want to wait any more. So the first thing we're going to do is weigh the cheese because I haven't done that yet. I just like to know what sort of yield I got this time. And it's exactly two and a half pounds. It's always an exciting day! The first thing I'd like to do always is smell it. I like to see what it smells like. Wow! Very "cheddary". Not a surprise. I'm going to show you this. I'ts part of the reason why I decided to open it. There's a little bit of mold on the right right there. I noticed it the last time I was flipping it. So we're going to go ahead and remove that right now. If there's a little bit of mold what may have happened is there might have been some moisture. But I decided it was time to get this open and see what it tastes like. Let's cut a wedge. It slices easily. Definitely a nice definitely a nice firm paste. It looks good. Wow! Oh check it out. That's beautiful - looks good. A little piece came off conveniently, so let's taste this. Mmm!! A little tangy and its right in the middle between mild and sharp and would call this a medium cheese. Which would probably be just about right for five months. Mmm. Yeah, this is delicious! It wasn't too hard to make it is a long process it took about six hours and start to finish but there are a lot of breaks in between. This is a cheese I'll make again. I recommend that you open it between 3 and 6 months, especially the first time if this is one of your first cheese's. At 3 months it'll be a little bit mild by 6 months. It'll be sharper. And if you want it sharper yet you could always return it back to the cheese cave for even longer, I would say up to a year Just keep watching and flipping it once a week. This cheese is going to be the star of our dinners for a while, I think. So if you want to learn how to make cheddar cheese, I think this recipe would be great for you. Thank you so much for watching. We appreciate your support. Like and subscribe and we will see you in the next episode.
It's savory kind of buttery like provalone mixed with cheddar amazing honestly.i had imported .it was awesome..white cheese. I got some Irish blood so I figured it was something I had to try once .extra sharp cheddar is my favorite
Cheese52, I Loved your video, seriously it was like a Good Book a person can’t put down.
Towards the end, when You added the Salt, my sense of smell & taste are over active, so when I eat some Cheese it’s like someone dumped a boatload of salt over it. But getting back to Your Cheese making, so do I have to add 2 1/2 Tablespoons of Salt ? Instead of the Orange colored Cheddar, to make White Cheddar, what ingredient or process don’t I do ?
Thank You so much 😊
Thanks I Wana learn cheddar,Irish cheddar my favorite cheese
Your awesome thx