How to Make Cheshire Cheese

well get a Kurd nerds today we're going to be making Cheshire for Cheshire iris a cheese made similarly to cheddar however it's one of the oldest cheese's in fact it's the oldest known cheese in England it was mentioned way back in 11:25 I remember rightly in some Abbott's books in a Priory this cheese is normally consumed within about 8 weeks to 6 months you don't eat it before a month it just hasn't developed its flavor correctly but what I'm going to do I'm going to age it for the full six months it's known as a crumbly cheese so that should be very interesting anyway let me show you how I made Cheshire so I'm using a milk sauce from inglenook dairy thanks to Troy for providing the milk and the ingredients are 10 liters or 10 quarts of whole milk it's about 3.6 percent fat was the one I was given a 1/4 of a teaspoon of mesophilic it's a starter culture 1/2 a teaspoon or 2.5 milliliters of calcium chloride diluted in a quarter of a cup of non-chlorinated water five-eighths of a teaspoon or three milliliters of liquid rennet I was using single strength I'm see you 200 and that's diluted in a quarter of a cup of non-chlorinated water now for salting we'll need 2 tablespoons of non-iodized salt now that can be kosher salt it can be sea salt is lot as well as long as it doesn't have a dent in it so once we poured all the milk in we're going to bring it up to temperature now sometimes that takes as much as 30 minutes so about 30 minutes later the target temperature for this cheese is 30 degrees Celsius or 86 degrees Fahrenheit I'm just using my thermapen there and when it gets to 31 things 29.9 but close enough let's take out your equipment now because I'm using homogenized milk here I made a mistake and you'll see that later on in the video I decided to add the calcium chloride upfront so I've brought it up to temperature I'm adding the calcium chloride solution now instead of later on after the milk is ripened now hoping this helps with curd set but we'll see it's a bit of a surprise [Music] so give that a good stir through your milk make sure it's thoroughly mixed in [Music] now I'm just slowing it down so it doesn't move around any more this is on purpose because we're going to add the next ingredient so we're gonna add in the mesophilic starter culture and that was a quarter of a teaspoon of mesophilic starter culture now each of these little sachets I'm using is only an eighth of a teaspoon so I had to use two sachets to get the right quantity just keep cutting the lid off the second sachet [Music] and we'll sprinkle that over the surface of the milk as well now we're going to cover and allow the starter culture to rehydrate for five minutes now the heat is off by the way so thirty minutes later I'm sorry five minutes later not thirty minutes but give the starter culture which is now hydrated a back into the milk so give it a good stir so it's incorporated all the way through the milk so it can do its thing and the lactic bacteria can convert the lactose in the milk into lactic acid [Music] it's also known as ripening at the milk so we're gonna cover and we're gonna allow the milk to ripen for 40 minutes at 30 degrees Celsius 86 degrees Fahrenheit so pop the lid on and set your timer okay 40 minutes later the milk has acidified slightly and now we're going to add the next ingredient just give that a little bit of a stir whoops before I do that what I should do is check the temperature [Music] so you can see that the temperature has crept up slightly by 1.2 degrees Celsius which is not a heck of a lot but that's okay during the the coagulation period it'll probably come down in temperature by about that much anyway so now we're gonna add the rennet to the milk make sure that the milk is being stirred when you add the rennet in there helps distribute it through now stir for no longer than one minute this sped up footage is actually about 40 seconds of stirring so we're gonna cover that and we're gonna allow the milk to set for 45 minutes at the target temperature of 30 degrees Celsius or 88 Fahrenheit so check for a clean break after that period of time but if it you don't get a quick clear break that looked quite sloppy actually so we'll let that set for another 10 minutes I'm having some trouble with the curd set during this cheese so I had to wait an extra 20 to 30 minutes so this sort of thing happens in cheese making the unfortunate thing and I don't know if you can see there I'm actually using him in gone up dairies milk which is really good milk however I didn't specify who and I asked for the milk that at the unhomogenized so this is homogenized milk has difficulty setting occurred so yes my own silly fault for not asking for the right milk correctly but yeah I think we'll get a cheese out of it and I think it'll be Cheshire so I had to wait for a fair bit more time because homogenized milk so I did another test and it looks okay it's not sloppy it's a lot firmer you can feel that when you plunge the knife in there to do the clean break test so now that being good we're going to cut the curds into 1/2 centimeter or quarter inch cubes so I just did the horizontals on doing the verticals with my sanitized curd knife now it's a fairly small cut gotta be quite accurate so I'm just doing the vertical cuts one way [Music] and then I'm gonna do it perpendicular to that now I can actually feel on under the knife that it's not the strongest curd set that I've ever had and as I mentioned before in the little work jump in there that it's homogenized milk so I usually don't use homogenized milk I used non homogenized or cream lined milk is what you're after for cheese making it's one of the best products you can get as long as it's not ultra pasteurized okay now because the cubes were not small enough I just chose to stab my sanitized balloon whisk just in a firm up-and-down motion into the curds and then pull it out again I'm not whisking or anything like that just moving it up and down to cut the curds smaller there we go so we're going to cover that now and allow the Kurds to heal so that they're not going to fracture when you stir them so going to allow them to heal for five minutes okay five minutes later we're gonna gently lift and move the Kurds to ensure that they're all cut and if there are some large pieces just cut them with a spoon just like I did there now we're gonna stir for five minutes and we're going to rest for five minutes so after the resting period we're going to dip off one liter or one quart of why now I thought I could do it with just the measuring cup but I had to break out my trusty sieve as always and measure out one liter [Music] there we go doesn't go down very far but I did get a better liter there maybe a little bit more but it's not very much [Music] I was only using 1/4 cup measure okay so now we're going to stir the curds and we stir them for quite a long time you know be gentle when you're staring at first because you don't want the curds to fracture and what they do they just turn into mush if that the fracturing happens [Music] okay so we're gonna gently stir those curds for about an hour and we're gonna heat them up to 31 degrees Celsius or 88 Fahrenheit so that's only one degree Celsius higher than what the original target temperature was so my milk are my curds and whey have cooled down to twenty nine point five point six which is actually just under the target temperature so you just put it on the lowest heat there was possible and over the arrow just I checked every 15 minutes to make sure it wasn't creeping up and by about the 15 minute mark of stirring I found that it was at 31 degrees Celsius so that was cool the time has gone off there you can see that the curds are fairly small they're actually about their plump rice grain size so fairly small something you would normally see when you makes a parmesan Ora or an Alpine cheese anyone doing the squeeze test there to see if the Kurds will knit together in a good squeeze and they are they are knitting together so I think there stood enough I wouldn't steer any longer than an hour that's for sure okay and they break apart when you press your thumb into them and try not to get curds alone my hands anyway it's briefly gonna wash my hands here for a second now this is a very important step just make sure that we cover and allow the curse to settle for 40 minutes because the curd size is so small this assists when we drain the curds okay so over to the sink area and we're gonna drain our curds through a cheesecloth lined colander now I'm using loose weave cheesecloth you don't really need tight weave it won't go through the through the mesh just make sure you get it all out there okay now found it wasn't draining very well I wanted to drain fairly quickly as it should do so I'm just going to shake that up grab the four corners just lift it up now the way is whip is running fairly clear so we're not losing any fat when we do this I'm just gently holding the bag of curds there moving them around so that the excess way comes off now this is important because we're going to transfer the way back into the pot in a second to make a big curd slab so I'm just pressing that down there to get any excess why I possibly can and then just popping in the pot and just pull one side of the cheesecloth and then it just rolls out into a big ball anyway so we're just gonna push that down in the pot and we're gonna keep it warm now what I've done in that little sink is put hot water from the tap so it just touches the bottom of the pot at that angle it's our nice little trick there to keep the curds warm during the chattering process which is what we're moving into now now I'm just cleaning off my cheesecloth because I'm going to reuse it that's really hot water it's about 70 degrees Celsius coming out the tap so that'll keep it nice and clean so every so often just push down to create a big cake of curd and drain off where necessary the money only did this for about five minutes a fan it was a little bit mushy but by being persistent and shaping it it did form a slab eventually now we're gonna look cover and allow that to stand keeping warm using the hot water underneath the pot for 30 minutes so 30 minutes later drain off any of the excess way I'm gonna grab the curd knife I'm gonna cut the slab into four large chunks which I'll just did there and I'm just gonna move them around a little bit so that they're not touching each other and you can actually see the cut lines there we go so we're gonna allow that to rest for another 30 minutes make sure you pop the lid on keep all the Beasties out and you can see the water there that I just showed you that's warm water out of the tap okay so thirty minutes later you can see the the that the way is running fairly clear now which is a good sign that everything's going okay so we're just drain and then we turn the curd over and we're then going to cover and rest for another 30 minutes so I'm just turn each slab there [Music] there we go okay so thirty minutes later I went through exactly the same process again you can see it's more waveform - they're down the bottom so we're gonna drain off the way and then we're going to turn over the cut Kurt again now it's essential that the curd stays warm during this period because it won't knit together properly and it won't expel as much way as as necessary for making this cheese a crumbly cheese okay so I think we're done with the final turning of the curds there so just gonna drain off the way that'll do just rinsing out my cheesecloth I didn't keep any of the little bits that that I tipped into that colander during the chattering process because they were cold they won't get into the cheese if you use them it looks quite quite terrible actually in the if you press them into the warm curds okay so I'm using a chopping board as a clean chopping board and I'm going to move a chunk at a time onto the chopping board are we going to use the curd knife just to cut the curd into two centimeter or three quarters of an inch size two cubes or as close as possible there so don't get too obsessed with this eyes of the cubes I'm just using my thumbnail as 2 centimeters so I'm trying to figure it out from there okay so once they're cut then we pop them back into the pot there's no you need to use a different pot or anything like that so I'll just finish off though I'm being a bit finicky there ever here we go now they're all cut so that was just one slab so pop them in back into the pot so how about we speed this sucker up righty-ho so as I said 2 centimeter cubes for all of the slabs pop them all back into the pot shouldn't say too long takes about 5 minutes to do this part of the process now by doing this you actually ensure that the final cheese is crumbly and has the desired texture for a Cheshire Archies [Music] there we go all done we wash on the hands now we're going to grab our salt and we're going to add our two tablespoons of salt and we're going to gently mill those through the curds now there's a brief appearance by tell you there so just toss your salt through the curds just gently there don't over toss it don't need to if you start seeing cloudy way you've gone too far so line your mold with a cheesecloth and we're gonna fill it with the curds just a handful of at a time it's a sufficient they get too excited I'd pour the whole lot in it usually goes everywhere just a handful at a time nice and simple okay just get rid of the pot and now we're gonna press the cheese so you can see there that I'm actually pulling the cheesecloth down a little bit to make sure that there are no wrinkles in the side of the cheese then I just fold over the cheesecloth put the follower on top put it into the press and we're gonna press it ten kilograms or 22 pounds for thirty minutes initially we're trying to get the cheese to close up all those cubes to all stick together so 30 minutes later we're gonna take it out of the press [Music] now just load this part of the footage down because you can see there that it's not completely closed up this is only the initial pressing so what you need to do be very gentle in case it all falls apart hopefully it won't but be gentle turn it over and then redress it with the cheesecloth and we're gonna press it at max pressure 50 pounds or 22 kilograms for at least 12 hours I chose overnight so though I had it in the press at about 6 p.m. and left it overnight and took it out of the press the next day at about 7 a.m. so that's about 13 hours so between 12 and 13 it'll be fine now what you have to do is Jeff do you check the cheese to make sure that it is fully closed up so you've got a fully closed up brined if not you may need to press it for a few more hours now as you'll see in a second the cheese was fine it was fully pressed all closed up now I didn't need to trim a little bit with a knife just a little bit of a yet birth ear so just cut that off it's the best time to do it and then we're gonna air dry that for two days until it's touch dry so this is after the two days you can see there looks a little bit mottled that's just where the different cubes had closed up so there's no issue there there's no open texture or anything there is a solid rind all the way through which is perfect that's what you're trying to get to and it is touch dry feels a bit like a a clammy handshake that's when you know it's ready to either wax or vacuum pack so there's my Cheshire and it's all its glory before we put it away from it maturation now I'm opting to vacuum pack so there's my trusty vacuum pack machine I'm using a sunbeam FoodSaver is the brand of the vacuum pack error case anybody wants to know so we're gonna seal that up we're gonna ripen it at 13 to 16 Celsius or 54 to 60 Fahrenheit for 2 to 6 months you can age it up to a year now turn weekly for even ripening now I'm going to ripen mine for 6 months so that'll be ready in July 2018 there it is all sealed I'll pop that in my cheese cave now that wasn't too hard was it I think it's a fairly simple cheese to make the process I made it within one day so I think I started at about 11 o'clock and finished at about 6 o'clock so about seven hours of from putting the milk into the VAT and heating it up and finally happening and in the press now there are three types of Cheshire so there's red Cheshire which you can add an art o to there's white Cheshire which is this variety here and there's also a blue Cheshire which is very similar to Stilton but a lot crumbly er there's not a lot of added fat to this I use normal plain milk that had a fat content of 3.6% so that's kind of the range that you're looking for when it comes to milk anyway it was a simple cheese to make I had great fun making it and hope you do too now don't forget to check out some other videos that we have here on how to make other types of cheeses now if you want to support the show pop over to patreon the link is down below in the description also if you want to make this type of cheese check out our hard cheese kit over at little green workshops.com do you thanks for watching curd nerds and I'll see you next time

Channel: Gavin Webber

Views: 39,547

Keywords: cheshire cheese, cheddaring process, Old English Cheese, semi-hard cheese, Crumbly cheese, cheshire, cheese making, cheesemaking, cheese, how to make cheese, cheese making at home

Id: ZQBU-msMy_s

Length: 25min 50sec (1550 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 18 2018