Hello my cheese loving friends and welcome to another cheese making episode. Today, we're making a simple cheese. It's Mozzarella cheese and it often considered a beginner's cheese because the ingredients are pretty easy to source. This recipe doesn't take very long and the equipment used is probably already in your kitchen. Now. Here's the interesting thing- surprisingly this easy cheese can have a high failure rate. In fact I know something about failing with his cheese the very first time I marched myself into a superstore picked up a gallon of milk and made the perfect mozzarella cheese and the next three times I tried to do it- I failed! So we're going to talk about that. I'm going to help you through some troubleshooting so that you can make your very best cheese So come into my kitchen and let me show you how to make Mozzarella cheese Here's the equipment you'll need to make this recipe: You'll need a stainless steel pot large enough to hold a gallon of milk. You'll need two glass containers to measure the ingredients. Perhaps the most important piece is the quality thermometer- something you can rely on. You'll need something to cut the curds. I'm going to use a curd knife but if you don't have one that's okay. Just make sure that the knife you use is long enough to reach the bottom of the pot. you'll need a stainless steel spoon for stirring, something to collect the curds and a place to hold the curds while we're heating the whey. Alright, make sure that you sanitize all of this equipment before you begin. Let's prepare the ingredients we'll need for the recipe We'll need to dissolve citric acid in non-chlorinated water. So we'll take one cup of non-chlorinated water And to that we'll add one and a half teaspoons of citric acid. Stir thoroughly. And while we're at it we can prepare the rennet as well. Take a quarter cup of non-chlorinated water and add a half a teaspoon of rennet. Stir well. You can find citric acid in your canning area in your local grocery store, but rennet is a little harder to find locally. I get my ingredients online. I'll put a link in the description box so you can take a look at them. Let's pour the milk. Step one is to acidify the milk. Take the citric acid mixture and pour it into the pot. Then pour your milk quickly into the citric acid. The milk should be cold from the refrigerator. Stir well. Now turn on the heat and slowly heat it to 90 degrees. Oh! I see ears! Meet YumYum. She's the real star of the channel. As soon as I pour milk, she's in the kitchen. Once you've reached the target tip of 90 degrees F it's time to stir in the rennet.Pour in the rennet slowly, and remove the thermometer. Stir the rennet for no longer than 30 seconds. Turn off the heat, cover the pot and let the milk begin to coagulate. We're going to let it rest for five minutes. Alright. It's been five minutes and let's see if we have a curd. Just take your knife and insert it into the center. And yes we do! That looks awesome. Alright, let's cut the curd. We're going to cut it in 1-inch cubes in a crisscross pattern. The next step is to cook the curd. Slowly over a few minutes take the temperature from 90 degrees to 110 Fahrenheit. While this is happening, you'll want to gently stir the curds. When you're stirring at this stage take the curds from the outside into the center nice and slowly. Once the curds have reached 110 go ahead and turn off the heat and cover the curds with a lid for five minutes. They'll continue to cook at the 110 degrees F. See you in five minutes. And now it's time to remove the curds. Here we go. Oh, wow. Look at that! As you're removing the curds from the whey. Go ahead and let them drain a little bit. We want most of the whey out when we're beginning to stretch. I'm going to take the curds and with my very clean hands we're going to go ahead and continue to drain the whey. You just want curds. Heat the reserved whey to between 175 degrees and 190 degrees F. And now the next part is the moment of truth. Will they stretch? Fingers crossed! Okay cheese loving friends the next step involves plunging your hands into are you ready? One hundred and seventy-five fahrenheit to 190 degrees Fahrenheit hot whey and I don't know about you but that doesn't sound like a lot of fun to me. So I have a couple of options for you if you're not interested in just plunging your hands right in. I know I'm not! So, you can go with these types of gloves. These are insulated barbecue gloves and the pro to thiese is you're not going to feel the heat at all the negative to these is they are a little more cumbersome, but I still think they can do the job. Your second option is to use nitrile gloves. Now, these are thinner so you are going to feel some of the heat through them but they give you more dexterity. So the choice is up to you, whichever you prefer. I'll put links in the description box below so you can take a closer look. Transfer the hot whey to your working station. All right, here's the moment of truth. With a ladle, take some of your curd and go ahead and plunge it into the hot whey and Then let it sit there for a few seconds Now, my hands are clean, but I just want to make double sure. And you're going to take a quarter cup of non-iodized salt and sprinkle it into the whey This is going to give the cheese a nice flavor Just just stir it in. I'm going to use these because I like the dexterity. I'll try these first. Warning! Any attempt to put on nitrile gloves while your hands are wet will result in fits of laughter. Ready? So you're gonna take it nice, nice amount of the curd I'm gonna take it and put it in the ladle and plunge it into the hot whey. And let it sit there for a few moments. And you can do this with all of the curds. I'm going to do this with one small piece first. Just to make sure. I'm gonna give a bit stretch Yeah, so I'm kneading the cureds right here on the ladel. You don't want to overdo it Just enough where you think you're gonna get it to stretch. I can kind of see it start to happen. Yeah. All right. Here we go! Let's see if we can take this to stretch. Oh ya. Check it. (Laughing) That's awesome! Just do three nice and easy stretches: One, Two, Three. Looks great. Shape it into the size you want. If you feel like it's slowing down on the stretch you can just heat it up a little bit. That's a little warm, but not too bad... Okay. I plan to eat this almost right away, and I'd like to I'd like to eat it warm. So I'm going to place this in room temperature whey. and You can keep this here in room temperature whey for about an hour. All right now the rest, I'm just going to reach right in and we're going to do the whole thing. Plunge it into the hot whey and let it sit. For a few moments. Whispers- Whew. I's hot. (Kitty meows from the floor) (Chuckles) Do you want some? Not sure if you can see her her, but the cat is right by my feet .No wonder, I'm sure she smells the whey. Okay, here we go. Alright here's what we're gonna do. Here we go. Okay, so we're gonna knead it, That's looking good . Just waiting for that shiny appearance to show up. It's not quite there but I'm close. Back into the whey. Just another few seconds. Oh ya, here we go. Yep ready? One stretch, Two stretch, Three stretch. That should do it not. Now form it into the shape you want. And this time, I plan to store it in the refrigerator for a day because I want to grate it and freeze it for later for pizza. So I plan to plunge it into a cold water bath. Get it nice and smooth looking Oh And I have my ice water bath here and it goes. I'm just fishing out the last little bit because I want to taste it right away Oh that is SO GOOD! It is milky, creamy with just the right amount of salt. Mm-hmm. This is delicious. Want some? Oh, that's really good. I thought you'd like that. Success! All right, let's do some troubleshooting. Tip Number One: Use the best milk possible. I like to use pasteurized unhomogenized milk and I can support a local farmer by doing that and I find it's the best milk to make any cheese. There's a cheese making saying better milk makes better cheese, and that really is true. But you can also make fantastic cheese with regular store-bought grocery milk in fact, my first one was a regular purchased milk at the local grocery and it turned out just fantastically. But, if you're having some difficulty producing a cheese with regular store-bought milk that leads us to Tip Number Two: Switch your brand You see not all store-bought milk is created equally. Some of it really borders on ultra pasteurized and ultra pasteurized it really isn't good for cheese making. So if you fail with one type of milk switch on your brands, keep notes and try again. And then once you find that brand that works for you, stick with it Tip Number Three: Recognize that this recipe can fail in two places- at the curd cutting stage and at the stretching stage. So to help to set a better curd make sure that the citric acid is very well mixed into the milk and I do that I pour the citric acid in first and then quickly pour the milk over top of it so that it can be mixed in thoroughly. And also make sure that your milk is very cold from the refrigerator. Definitely do not use calcium chloride with this recipe because it relies on the citric acid to plunge that pH down very quickly. And so you think calcium chloride could set a better curd won't work in this case. Plus even if you did get a better curd, you won't get a better stretch. Now at the stretching phase the best way to get a good stretch is just to stretch it gently two or three times and if you're having trouble getting a stretch at all plunge it back into the water or the whey and adjust your temperature accordingly. I'm finding that that sweet spot for a good stretch is anywhere between 175F and 190F. But if it's not stretching just heat the curds back up and try again. be sure to stretch just a few times because stretching too much will result in a rubbery type of cheese and that's not what you want either. Speaking of your expectations of this cheese: This is a quick mozzarella, and it's designed to be eaten quickly. It's designed to be soft and creamy and silky. It is not your traditional type of shredded cheese that you pick up at the grocery store. That's more along the lines of the traditional method that uses culture instead of citric acid Store your cheese properly Make sure that you cheat is stored in a glass container and it's consumed within a couple of days or frozen for later use. Otherwise the cheese could get a little slimy. Eww. Thanks so much for watching and glad you enjoyed this video. Browse around the channel to see what other favorite cheese making recipes you can find. If you enjoyed this one, give it a thumbs up. Subscribe to the channel and you see you in the next episode.
So this is what Linus Tech Tips turns into in the future.
I've done mozzarella a few times and never quite get the texture soft enough like the shop brought, I 'had' been storing it in whey and I think that was part of the problem. Any advice on getting the texture softer would be gratefully received.
Great video! What happened with the cheese you put into the hot whey around 10:20, before you started putting on the gloves? Was that supposed to melt into the whey? Looks like you didn't take it out before you put more in at 11:40.
Well thank you, TIL!
Thanks Cheese52! Love your videos!
Tried this recipe out hoping it would fix my mozz issues, but no such luck. The curd never formed up properly, I didn't get a clean split with the knife I inserted at the 5 minute mark after adding rennet (fresh and newly opened), not even after giving it another 5 minutes to set. I'll give it a try with a different milk at some point. I was using Aldi's whole/vitamin D milk.
Yayyyy so glad you posted this! My brother got me a cheese making kit for xmas and this looks like the perfect cheese to start with!
I saw a video of your cheese curds and that they were squarish. Most cheese curds I’ve had in Quebec look more like pebbles. How does one go about having that kind of cheese curd shape?