Foodie Wednesday: Farmers Cheese

Something super easy today. Not something you would want to make all the time, but it is nice to say you made your own cheese at least once in your life. ;)

Ingredients
3 cups Whole Milk
Lemon and/or vinegar
Cheese Cloth


Take you milk and slowly heat it up to about 175 degrees or when bubbles start to form around the edge of the pot and its all steamy. Then take the pot off the heat.

Show love for the piggie spatula

Then juice half your lemon and add it to the pot of milk. Stir slowly for a minute. You will see the crud separate from the whey. Trust me when I say. For some people this part will look gross but it's a good gross.

Then just let it sit in the pot for about 10 minutes.

Now take a stainer and some cheesecloth. About four layers worth. Slowly pour your cheese in.
Make sure you drain it in a pot to keep the whey.

Now from this point you can do a few things.

There cheese in that. Hmm.

You can let the cheese lightly drain til it becomes more or less like the consistency of cottage cheese.

You can also tie the cheesecloth over and let it hang over your pot for about a half hour and it will be thick like cream cheese. If you want it to be a lil' thinner like a ricotta cheese just add a few spoon fulls of whey back to the crud and mix til you get what you like.

Now the cheese will taste flat if you don't add salt. So add salt to taste. From that point on you can add what you like. Different herbs and spices.

I like making my cheese thicker and cooling it in a ramekin. When I serve it I add pepper and olive oil over it. It's nice with toast or crackers.
If you make it more like ricotta you can use it in pasta dishes and the like.
Basically you can use it anyway you use any other cheese.


*Tips
If you don't have a lemon you can use vinegar.
To give your cheese a tangy flavor you can add an additional cup of buttermilk at the beginning.
If your milk doesn't curdle right away add additional lemon or vinegar.

The cost to make this cheese pretty much equals out to the price of buying similar already made cheese. However you should say at least once you made cheese. Ha.

Have a nice Wednesday.