Cheese Making Class

Two Sunday mornings ago, in mid-August, one of my favorite people and I found ourselves back at the cooking school for a cheesemaking class. We were there to learn how to make mozzarella cheese from whole milk and ricotta cheese from the whey. The recipes using the cheese looked like they could be fun, but we were really there to learn how to make the cheese.

My cooking companion is not a stranger to the process of making mozzarella. For several family holidays, he has bought milk curd in bulk from a local cheesemaker in order to knead and stretch those curds into balls of homemade mozzarella. On several holiday mornings, I remember finding him alternating between stretching the curd in super hot salted water and cooling his scalded hands in a bath of ice water. One holiday, he even tasked me with stopping by the cheesemaker on my way to his house to buy the bulk milk curd. Was that an adventure! The cheesemaker was located in the back of an industrial park, I had to wander to find the entrance to their business office, they didn’t have his order ready so I had to wait 20-30 minutes in the business office (without a book!), and it just kind of went downhill from there. But in the end, I got the curd, he stretched it into fresh mozzarella, and we all had a delightful family holiday meal from it.

In true fashion, we arrived at the cooking school about fifteen minutes early, and the doors were still locked. So we walked over to the giant bookstore to sit in their café and drink coffee. My cooking companion was brimming with excitement about what we would learn. In June, we had taken a knife skills class with the same chef and that had given him the confidence to work with his 14-inch knives, as well as taught him a neat trick for removing the skins from garlic cloves with a silicone garlic roller. When we walked back to the cooking school, the doors were open, so we took our seats and both avidly set to reading the information packet with the recipes for the class. We were both a little surprised to learn that we would be making ricotta from whole milk, rather than from the whey of the mozzarella.

Making Ricotta Cheese

I love good ricotta: it is creamy and slightly sweet. I can eat it with a spoon and be happy. So I was looking forward to learning how to make it. It turns out that it is super simple! All it requires is whole milk, buttermilk, and superfine salt – no rennet or citric acid required. The acid in the buttermilk is enough to separate the proteins from the water in the whole milk.

That being said, there are some safety concerns and some technique to take into consideration. In general, when cheesemaking, it is best to use metal utensils to minimize germs. The metal utensils can be first sterilized in the dishwasher or in boiling water for ten minutes. Wooden utensils are bad because they are hosts to millions of germs, and plastic utensils can get nicks in them where bacteria will grow. Similarly, the bowls used in cheesemaking should be either stainless steel or glass, and should also be sterilized before use.

The technique is quite simple – be sure to stir in the same one direction the entire time. To make ricotta, start with whole milk in a heavy gauge metal pot over medium high heat. Try not to use aluminum or cast iron pots, because heavy gauge metal pots will most easily control the heat. Heat the milk, while constantly stirring in the same one direction, until the milk comes to a frothy boil and then turn off the heat. As the bubbling calms down, gently stir in superfine cheese salt and buttermilk and continue stirring in that same one direction until the curds and whey separate. Move the pan off the stove and set aside undisturbed for at least five minutes.

To finish the ricotta, place a stainless steel strainer lined with a single layer of cheesecloth inside a large stainless steel or glass bowl. All these implements should be sterilized in the dishwasher before use in cheesemaking. Carefully pour the curds and whey through the cheesecloth in the strainer, holding the cheesecloth to make sure that all the curds remain inside it. If the strainer and cheesecloth are sitting in the whey, remove them and sit them in an empty bowl. Leave the curds to drain in the strainer for 15 to 30 minutes, depending on desired consistency. To hasten draining, you can turn the cheesecloth into a draining sack by picking up all four corners of the cheesecloth and gently twisting the sack so that the cheesecloth just barely touches the surface of the curds.

My cooking companion and I tasted our ricotta after it had sufficiently drained and before it got measured into the ice cream recipe. We both were disappointed that it tasted more like raw milk curd than the creamy ricotta that we were accustomed to. I suggested that a tablespoon or two of heavy cream might make it right. Sure enough, when he got home with his leftover bag of ricotta, he doctored it up – I forget how – and liked it well enough. I, on the other hand, ate my leftover ricotta with a spoon straight from the ziploc and was completely unfazed by that.

Making Mozzarella Cheese

The safety concerns and basic techniques of stirring in one direction and using an acid to separate the protein from the milk are the same. However, making mozzarella curd is more complex. There are more ingredients. There are exact temperature and exact times that need to be observed in order for things to turn out properly.

Mozzarella requires two exotic ingredients: citric acid and rennet. Citric acid is a naturally occurring acid found in citrus fruits. Rennet is a complex of enzymes produced in the stomachs of cows and other cud-chewing animals. According to my cooking companion, the majority of rennet for culinary purposes is produced by yeast. So to start the mozzarella making process, our first steps were to dissolve liquid rennet in a small amount of cool water and to dissolve the powdered citric acid in a separate small amount of cool water.

Like the ricotta, we poured whole milk into a clean heavy gauge metal pot. Unlike the ricotta, we added the citric acid solution, stirring in one direction to incorporate, and then set over high heat to bring to exactly 90F. (Yes, we continued to stir in one direction while waiting for the milk to come to 90F.) Once the milk reached the target temperature, we got all excited! We added the rennet solution and stirred slowly in one direction for exactly 15 seconds. Then we stopped stirring, turned off the heat, and walked away. We were supposed to cover the pan and leave it undisturbed for five minutes. Eventually, the kitchen assistants covered our pots for us, but we left them to make ricotta ice cream so they probably sat for more than five minutes.

When we came back to mozzarella making, the chef instructor checked our curd for us. Ours was lovely: it resembled a firm custard with a clear separation between the curd and whey around the edges of the pan. We cut the curd into one-inch squares in a checkerboard pattern, and turn the heat back up to high. The objective this time was to bring the mixture up to 110F, while gently stirring the curd in one direction. Once the target temperature was reached, we turned off the heat but kept stirring for a while (I forget how long, but the recipe recommends two to five minutes). After stirring, we drained the curd using a similar cheesecloth/metal strainer/stainless steel or glass bowl setup to what we used for the ricotta.

Once our curd was all captured in the cheesecloth, we pulled the strainer out of the whey and placed it over a second clean stainless steel (or glass) bowl. We poured the whey back into our pot and heated that up to a target temperature of 185F. The minimum temperature of the whey for curd to stretch is 135F, so heating to 185F allows for some cooling while working. We put the metal strainer with the curd into the hot whey, and let it sit for a few minutes. Then my cooking companion worked his magic! He was completely in his element stretching the curd into balls of mozzarella, cooling his hands in an ice bath, and coaching everyone else at the table. I just hung back and watched in amazement. My cooking companion was disappointed that he had to ask for an ice bath for their hands; he thought that the chef instructor would have thought of that for them. He was looking forward to learning some new techniques on stretching mozzarella. The only input that the chef instructor had was that the less contact with the curd will result in a smoother mozzarella. If the curd is overworked, the mozzarella will be yellow and waxy. My cooking companion observed that he salts his water, but the chef instructor countered that he would have better control over the salt level if he added the salt to each individual ball with his hands instead.

My cooking companion and I tasted the mozzarella before it got it used in the recipe. We both thought that it was really good. Not Hoboken buffalo mozzarella good, but really good nonetheless. It was creamy, slightly stretchy, and quite mild tasting. Like the leftover ricotta, I enjoyed my leftover mozzarella straight out of the ziploc.

Making Recipes Using Cheese

I’m not sure why the cooking school felt compelled to do recipes using the cheese. It was a treat enough to learn how to make ricotta and mozzarella. And the additional recipes were kind of lackluster.

With the ricotta, we made ricotta ice cream with chocolate and orange. It basically involved throwing all the ingredients – except the chocolate chunks and the chopped candied orange peel – into a food processor and then into an ice cream maker. Except the ice cream maker didn’t freeze the ice cream, so it was like a cold paste. And it tasted like a very sweet cannoli filling. Neither me nor my cooking companion were fans of the alleged ice cream.

With the mozzarella, we made a grilled peach, arugula, and mozzarella salad. This was better than the alleged ice cream. Although it would be much more work at home because I would have to mince the garlic and shallots myself for the vinaigrette. It was a super simple salad: make the vinaigrette, grill the peaches on a stovetop grill pan, toss the arugula with the vinaigrette, arrange the dressed arugula, grilled peaches, and fresh mozzarella on plate. It was pretty good. The vinaigrette was sweet due to the honey, but that was a nice complement to the slight bitterness of the arugula.

The Verdict

My cooking companion and I were both glad that we went to the class because we both learned some things about cheesemaking. For me it was like going from 0 to 75, and for him it was like going from 75 to 90. When I last saw him, he was asking about the feasibility of using his sous vide machine to keep the whey at 185F when stretching the mozzarella curd. Sure enough, he Googled his question and found a YouTube video from a Pennsylvania cheesemaker that addressed it. Of course, the last time I talked with him, he said that he had already acquired fresh rennet (his previous rennet had expired) and citric acid for mozzarella making. So I’m thinking that there may be homemade fresh mozzarella at the next family holiday!