Making SQUEAKY Cheese CURDS From Scratch

welcome friends today I'm gonna try and make squeaky cheese curds this is something that I really love to eat and sadly you can't really find it anymore where we live in Toronto it's just not something that you see a lot of so I'm starting out with whole milk this is pasteurized but non homogenized so you see the separation between the cream and the milk here in the jar this isn't something that you can get at the grocery store here I had to I had to search this out it is available just a little bit more difficult to find and the cream is essentially a plug at the top of the of the of the bottle so I'm gonna pour all of this into this pot now making cheese I've never done it before I've made ricotta and you can see those videos elsewhere on the channel but I've never made cheddar cheese or cheddar cheese curds so this will be a little bit new for me and part of it part the whole process is hold a little bit of milk back part of the whole process is keeping everything at a certain temperature you need to control the temperature very tightly so I've set up essentially a battery or a double boiler this pot has some water in the bottom and it also has some rings at the bottom to hold this pot off of the bottom I'm going to heat the water and try to keep it at a constant temperature so that the process works as it's supposed to and we'll see how that works out I know a lot of people will say in the comments why don't you use a sous-vide machine and I've got them and I could definitely do that I think the problem is a lot of people out there don't have them and let's find a solution that is easily accessible for anyone who wants to try this recipe so I've got the milk and the cream now in this pot and so I'm gonna stick this pot inside this pot and we need to bring the milk up to the temperature that is currently flashing on the screen I'm not gonna say a lot of the times in temperatures just because it's confusing and I don't wanna get myself confused so temperature probe into the milk and we'll keep an eye on that and when it comes up to the temperature we'll move on to the next step I got to tell you this milk that I got I've never used it before so it's non homogenized five percent whole milk and it's pretty crazy so this stuff here it's almost right out of the jug it's almost butter let's see if I get a taste that's amazing absolutely amazing I'm looking forward to these cheese curds okay we're pretty much at the right temperature you want to bring this up to 91 degrees Fahrenheit I'm at 90 and I'm gonna say that's a win so the next step is to sprinkle on this cheese culture and I will link to the cheese culture down below so that you can get the right one in my research there are four or five different cheese cultures that are listed as the right one to make this so I'll link to the one that I used and I'll also try to remember to put in all the other ones so you want to sprinkle this on and then we're gonna let it sit for about five minutes to bloom and then we're gonna give it a stir we're gonna stir it in to make sure that it's fully incorporated so we're gonna put a lid on it and we're gonna maintain that 90 or 91 degrees Fahrenheit for 40 minutes okay so it's almost been 40 minutes I have two containers and water in front of me they're both 60 mils of water and in the first one I want to dissolve calcium I get this stuff for my home brewery and it changes the water chemistry you can also find it in grocery stores in bulk food stores it's fairly easy to come across if you do pickling you're probably using it already and it often goes by the name pickle crisp but before you just go and use pickle crisp make sure that it's only calcium and in the next one I'm going to dissolve some rennet this is liquid rennet now the reason we're dissolving both of these in water is you don't want to just dump them straight into the milk you want to have them partially dissolved so that it's fully dissolved when you put it in there so give them both a stir and make sure they are good okay so I did pretty well maintaining the temperature a little bit of fluctuation not a whole lot so next up we just want to stir this and make sure that we've got even temperature inside and then we want to pour in the calcium now you want to pour it off the spoon just so that it doesn't all land in the same place and then stir it in and I read a bunch of different things about stirring it in some people say stir it up and down like this with a flat spoon now if you have a flat slotted spoon like I do that will work really well and other people said just to stir it and make sure that it gets stirred in and don't really worry too much about how you're stirring it so there we go now this one is the rennet and we want to do pretty much exactly the same thing all right pour it make sure it gets everywhere and then stir it in now once this is stirred in we're gonna set the timer for another 40 minutes and we're going to continue maintaining around 91 degrees Fahrenheit and during that time it should set up completely okay lid on timer set okay time is up now what we need to do is check and see if the curd is set so what you're supposed to do apparently is make a small little slit and then put your knife in and pick and if it's clean which it definitely looks like it's clean your curd is set we can move on to the next step which is to cut the curtain now there's a very special contraption for cutting curd it kind of looks like X's and O's and you stick it in and twirl it around and cut the curd perfectly if you have a curd cutter in your kitchen that's great I don't I'm just going to use a knife and so I'm gonna very carefully cut it in a pattern and then cut on a diagonal and see if we can get this curd cut to the right shape and size and the idea is you don't want to cut the curd too small and you don't want to cut it too large now we put the lid on for five minutes and let the curds heal okay so now we start to stir the curds gently look at them look at them they look pretty cool okay so over the next half hour I'm going to stir this gently and constantly and you need to raise the temperature over this 30-minute period and you can't raise it too quickly everybody says if you raise it too quickly there's something about the acidity that develops and it makes it sour you get off flavors so you need to gently heat it and over 30 minutes bring it up to 102 degrees Fahrenheit so this is this next bit is a little bit tricky not only do I have to stand here stirring I have to mind the temperature very carefully let's see what happens okay so the timer went off and I've got to 101 degrees Fahrenheit which I think it's pretty good I didn't overshoot so now I continue stirring and we go another 40 45 minutes holding this temperature and you don't have to sister quite as much at this point I've seen people say that you need to stir constantly and other people say if you stir every 15 minutes or so just give it a gentle stir you'll be okay so I'm gonna sort of split the difference in maybe every five minutes give it a nice a gentle stir oh and there we go we hit a hundred and two so you can see the curds have changed significantly from what they look like before they've gotten smaller and tighter the way is more pronounced so we'll just keep stirring and maintain that temperature okay so there's the timer now this is what it looks like the curds have gotten smaller much smaller and they're still distinct so here's the deal now I would say the advice of a lot of the recipes of stirring every 15 minutes is probably wrong you want to stir more often what I found was after the first 15 minutes they started to clump together and they were stuck together and everything that I read did say that you want the curd to be loose in this liquid you don't want it to clump together yet at this point so I would stir every five minutes or gently stir for the whole time period now we do want to let this rest for 15 minutes at this point you want it to settle to the bottom and you want it to start to clump together before we move on to the next thing which is draining it into a colander okay so I'm just gonna pull the cheesecloth over top here and we are going to let this sit and drain for about 15 minutes but I'm going to move it into this bowl because I want to put the way back in the original pot put it back in the Ben Murray and raise the temperature to 115 degrees Fahrenheit okay so this next step is called chattering it's the whole reason cheddar cheese gets its name what's gonna happen now is I've got the curds in this basket covered in cheesecloth over top of the warm way and the way is going to heat and steam just a little bit and the curds are going to drain now four times over the next hour so every 15 minutes I'm gonna pull the curds out and put them on the cutting board and I'm going to cut them in half turn one half on top of the other and then put it back over the pot cover it and let it to continue draining and the idea is over this time period more of the way is going to drain out of the curds making them dryer and squeakier okay cutting and folding and cutting and folding and squeezing so I did squeeze these while they were resting in there and I think that if you put a plate on top of some weight you would squeeze out even more of the way and some of the methods said to do that some of them said not to do it if the objective is to get most of the way out I would squeeze it or put something heavy on top of it during that process that we just went through now we need to cut it into curds I've been in the cheese factory where they cut the curds and they use a machine and it shreds it it's almost a machine like like a rototiller for a garden and it shreds it into uneven pieces we're not going to get that here so I'm just going to cut it and I'm gonna chop it up into smaller chunks that will be the curds and relax yes I know blue is not the color of cutting board for cheese but you know it's the one I could find okay the next thing you want to do is throw them into a container with a lid on a scale because you want to weigh the curds you want to know how much you've got here to determine how much salt to put in we have five hundred and fifteen grams so we need five grams of salt oh five point two that'll do okay so sprinkle the salt in put the lid on and give it a shake the idea here is that you want the salt to get all over every piece of curd and that's it well let it sit for about a half an hour or so and then we'll give it a taste what have you been doing all day you've been at this for hours all day squeaky cheese curds when I say all day it was like like nine hours of work yeah like you got up early and started this and now yes so nine hours that's not a lot of cheese no it's not a lot of cheese nine hours and like like $40.00 or the milk so I can hear there the squeaky Fromme here that's great squeaking hmm one really good cheese curve yeah um did you make some fresh bread to go with it no no so this will ripen over twelve hours and so 12 hours from now it will taste it will have a more rounded flavor okay and it will still squeak 24 hours from now the squeak will be completely gone because the squeak is caused by proteins long chains of proteins and the lactic acid in the in the cheese will break up those proteins and it will no longer squeak it seems your chemistry so 24 hours from now it'll be I feel like we need to do a taste again then in 12 hours so tomorrow morning when I come out I'll taste again and I'll report back sorry but at this point you could put that in a bag stick it by the counter yeah by the six hours for now it'll be good to go I'm in so I have a question though it took you nine hours yeah for what we had yeah would it take you to the same nine hours if you were making three times as much oh no yeah yes it would it would so the time doesn't get any longer okay with more volume Hey but how are we gonna eat this in the next 24 hours that's a lot of cheese I think I can get through it good for you I think I can get through it so if you were going to make put 10 mmm this is the curd that you need this is and you cannot buy it at the grocery store here because by the time it gets to the grocery store here it's cheddar yeah it's a cheddar soak this week is gone people are gonna ask how to store this on the counter don't put it in the fridge and consume it within 24 hours everything's fine Oh which is why it's so great to just get it from the corner store Oh what is that what is that the fairest ketchup yes yes the Feres ketchup ah yeah everything's ketchup everything's good yep okay good job so one more scene 12 hours with the lid on okay so here we are 14 or 15 hours later and we're gonna give this another go now let's see what happened still super squeaky and the flavors deepened they've ripened there is a much better depth of flavor after 14 hours on the counter so I would say then with this experience these cheese curds would be good to eat as soon as you've made them they are better to eat twelve to fourteen hours later so I guess the final question is is it worth it if you live somewhere that you cannot get squeaky cheese curds you can't get cheddar cheese curds then yes it is worth it to give this a shot it's also worth it if you're on an exploration of food and you really want to better understand how food gets from and specifically cheese gets from the cow to the grocery store this will give you an insight in the entire process and I think that's important too to try these things to know whether you want to do it yourself or if you want to buy better quality at the grocery store because you discover that what you've been buying is hmm maybe not that great so give it a try if you want thanks for stopping by see you again soon you

Channel: Glen And Friends Cooking

Views: 363,300

Keywords: Glen & Friends Cooking, Le Gourmet TV Recipes, recipe, Making Squeaky Cheese Curds From Scratch, how to make cheese curds, homemade cheese curds, squeaky cheese curd, how to make squeaky cheese curd, squeaky cheese curds, cheese curds recipe, making squeaky cheese curd, make cheese at home, homemade cheese, cheese curds, how to make cheese, poutine cheese recipe, poutine cheese curds, poutine cheese curd recipe, cheddar cheese curds recipe, how to make cheddar cheese curds

Id: tKUsYUFBPCA

Length: 19min 13sec (1153 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 15 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/adho123456]

Totally enjoyed learning about the process . Thanks