How to Make Nabulsi Cheese at Home (جبنه نابلسيه)

hi welcome to give cheese a chance i'm marianne i want to show you these papers these are the scribblings and notes that i took over 30 years ago when my mother showed me how to make cheese for the very first time i remember thinking back then mom i don't really want to learn how to make cheese but i did want to spend time with my mother i loved her so much her name was nadia and we used to have such good times in the kitchen so i said okay mom show me how to make cheese this is the cheese that she taught me to make we used to call it arabic cheese in general but it has a specific name it's called nabulsi cheese or nablus cheese because it originates from the city of nablus in palestine it actually goes by many different names for example other than nabulsi and arabic cheese it's known just as white cheese or an arabic gibney beda or gibney belladi nablus cheese is a traditional breakfast cheese served in many arabic countries including palestine jordan and syria as you can see it's white and rectangular in shape it's considered semi-hard and it's stored in a very salty brine solution for very long-term storage this cheese is similar to halloumi if you like lumi you're probably going to like this because it has a similar texture and mild flavor and you can eat it as is plain like this or you can pan fry it where it has a nice golden brown crust and warm gooey inside [Music] so here are the ingredients we'll need for this cheese first of all you'll need two gallons or eight liters of three percent homogenized cow's milk feel free to use sheep's milk or goat's milk if you have access to it because that's the traditional milk that was used for this cheese and it tastes great you'll also need one cup of salt in this case pickling or coarse salt is used we're going to need some rennet we're using half a tablet of rennet today if you don't have access to rennet you might have to order it online and i do give links in the description below on where you can order it in canada and the united states and you'll notice that there's no bacterial culture here on this display as there was when we did the episode number three for bruce inspired cheese and that's because this cheese gets its flavor from two delicate spices known as mahleb and mystica so let's talk about makhleb first mehleb is also known as but it may also be labeled as saint lucy cherry kernels or ground cherry stones because malab is made from the seeds of a species of cherry tree called the saint lucy cherry tree this is why mahleb's aroma and flavor is described as being cherry almond and rose-like and it is because of this great aroma that this spice is used in middle eastern cookies and breads but also this cheese ideally you should buy mahleb seeds and grind them yourself for the best flavor but i found it very difficult to find malab seeds so i always have to use the pre-ground version so you might too now let's talk about mystica it's also known as mastic mastiha mastixa mastic gum arabic gum lentisco lentis yemen gum i can't even say all those but you get the idea mastica is a crystal resin that is produced from the sap of a tree that runs down the trunk and hardens so it makes sense that mastica has an aromatic flavor that is best described as a mix between pine cedar and eucalyptus this flavor has been used in cooking since ancient times now that we've gone over our ingredients let's talk about the tools we'll need we'll need a large pot for our cheese a smaller pot to sterilize our fabric a long knife to cut the curds a long spoon to stir the curds a digital thermometer to get the right temperature some preserving jars a strainer a large measuring cup and two heavy cutting boards in addition we're going to be using a large piece of fabric this is butter muslin fabric to strain our curds and a small piece of cheese cloth to make a spice pouch we're going to tie that spice pouch with a little bit of string and we're going to tie our butter muslin cheese pouch with a bigger piece of string so make sure you have all those tools before you start this recipe and now that we've got everything we need let's make our cheese first sterilize your fabric cloth by dropping it in some boiling water for 15 minutes and letting it cool next add your milk to the pot and heat to 98 degrees fahrenheit to 105 or 36 to 40 degrees celsius on very low heat it won't take long to reach this temperature so keep an eye on it and stir occasionally while waiting for the milk to heat up put one half of a rennet tablet into a half a cup of water and let it dissolve then fill your kitchen sink one third full of water so that it is approximately the same temperature as our milk when your milk has reached the target temperature add your diluted rennet solution and stir for two minutes then cover the pot take your pot and put it in the sink to sit undisturbed for 30 minutes after 30 minutes take the lid off and check for a clean break you want the milk to be congealed and to split into two when you put a knife in like this if you don't get a clean break in 30 minutes put the lid back on and check again in 10 more minutes if you do get a clean break cut the curds while in the sink in three directions like this i've brought our pot back over to the stove and i'm turning the heat on very very low i'm going to be stirring the cubes with my slotted spoon for a 40 minute period so every five minutes i'm going to come back and stir the cubes again in the beginning when you stir you might find some very large cubes so just cut them up gently with your spoon i use a very low-tech method of keeping track of my stirring so i just cross off every circle that has passed for five minutes that way i don't have to keep remembering and of course i use my friend siri or alexa to do my five minute timings you'll probably notice over the 40 minute period your temperature has gone up from what it was when we started to about 45 to 50 degrees celsius that's fine but you don't want it to go too much higher than that it's the end of the 40 minute period and look how the curds have shrunk in size and all of the way that has been produced by stirring for 40 minutes i've lined my colander with my sterilized fabric and put it in the sink i'm going to use my spoon or my measuring cup to scoop the curds into the colander it's much faster with a larger measuring cup let this drain for 15 minutes after the 15 minutes pick up the edges of your fabric and create a knot either with the fabric or with the string and we're going to put this bag of cheese in between two cutting boards make sure you lay the knot on the side like this find something like a spoon or a marker to lift up one end of the cutting board this way all of the way will drain downwards into your sink then put your second cutting board on top balance it very well and put something heavy on top as well make sure this is stable you do not want it to come crashing down in the middle of the night now let that sit for eight hours or overnight to drain it's now day two and i've already washed my jars and my lids and i'm ready to prepare my flavored brine so to make the brine base we need to add one full cup of course or pickling salt to a large pot then fill the pot with eight cups of water in this case you can use chlorinated water and give it a stir you'll notice that there's a lot of salt on the bottom of the pot but that's okay because we're going to be heating this brine and the salt will dissolve the next thing we're going to do is to make a pouch full of our two spices the first thing we're going to do is measure out one teaspoon of ground matlab and we're going to place it in the center of our small piece of cheesecloth next we're going to prepare our mastica measure half a teaspoon of mastica put it into a bowl we're going to give it one hard clunk just to crush those crystals in half we don't want to pulverize this then pour that spice also onto your cheesecloth square we're going to get our little piece of string and tie up this spice pouch you're going to take your spice pouch and add it directly to your salty brine and bring it over to your stove to heat it up to boiling while we're waiting for our brine to boil we're going to take a look at our cheese that is a good solid block of cheese we're going to cut it into cubes you don't have to be exact with the size of your cubes some could be large and some could be small just play with it and have fun once the brine has come to a boil and all of the salt is dissolved drop a few pieces of the cheese into the pot and let them boil for five minutes turning once then lay them on a plate to cool repeat this process until all the cheese squares have been boiled for five minutes each let the cheese and the brine cool completely for 30 minutes now that my cheese and brine are fully cooled i'm going to pack my cheese into the jars [Music] carefully scoop your brine and cover your cheese completely and take your flavor pouch and put it into one of your jars that will give that jar extra flavor and seal them with your lids these jars do not need to be processed in a water bath or specially sealed it's because this method of preservation was developed prior to the invention of modern refrigerators the cheese is preserved in such a high concentration of salt that microbes don't easily grow and you will find many people today who keep their jars at room temperature for months because of this high salt concentration but nowadays i'd recommend that you store your jars of cheese in your fridge or basement cold room well they will last a year in order to eat this cheese it has to be de-salted first you can't eat it right out of the brine like you would a feta cheese so how do we remove the excess salt take a few squares of cheese and soak them in very hot even boiling water for an hour or more then change the water soak the cheese again in fact to speed up this desalting process cut the squares of cheese into smaller pieces some people are smart and they do this step the night before in preparation for their breakfast so when they wake up they have cheese ready to eat so we finished making our nabulsi cheese we have four jars two of which i'm gonna keep for myself and the other two i'm going to give away as gifts to friends remember this will last in your fridge for a whole year so you have a lot to eat and i'm gonna tell you how to eat this cheese many people eat it plain like is shown here and you can have it with grapes or watermelon as a snack or you can have it as part of a traditional palestinian breakfast with fried eggs boiled eggs olives zotar extra virgin olive oil and some tomatoes and cucumbers with pita or arabic bread it's just delicious and very satisfying i also want to let you know that you can fry it in some butter and that is a delicious treat in arabic we say which means help yourself and then we say which means to your health it's our way to say to you enjoy the meal with us and i'm so glad that you joined us on give cheese a chance please join us next time and in the meantime we'd love you to see these pictures that were sent to me by people who made and enjoyed their nabulsi cheese and [Music] [Music] satin [Music] bye

Channel: Give Cheese a Chance

Views: 38,232

Keywords: cheese, cooking, cheesemaking, DIY, Mary Anne, Give Cheese a Chance, Nabulsi, Naboulsi, Arabic cheese, white cheese, jibny baida, jibney baladiyeh, Nablus cheese, Making cheese at home, home cheesemaking, cheesemaking at home, Palestinian breakfast, arabic food, arabic breakfast, mahleb, mistaka, mastic, mahlab, mahlepi, mastic gum, arabic cooking, fried cheese, nigella, nigella seeds, how to make nabulsi, how to make nabulsi cheese, making nabulsi cheese, nabulsi recipe

Id: PccBkngOPTQ

Length: 17min 32sec (1052 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 11 2020