Oooof. Look at that stink-eye. Gale heard that I bought cow milk at the grocery store. It’s going to take me dozens of animal crackers to earn her forgiveness, but it’ll be worth it, because I’m doing this for you, my friends.
Making cheese is a big part of my life. Huge, even. I make cheese of some sort every single week, without exception. Sometimes twice a week, or three times. Making cheese makes me happy, and it makes the people I love happy. And I want you to try it, too. However, I hear people say “I don’t have raw milk. I don’t have a goat. I don’t have expensive equipment, or fancy equipment. I’m too busy. And I just don’t know how.” It’s okay. You don’t have to have access to all those fancy things, not when you’re just starting out, and I’m here to help you learn without wasting a ton of your time.
I marched myself down to my local Walmart and I bought more than I needed to make cheese. I bought three gallons of whole milk (because I want to show you more than one recipe during the course of these beginner lessons), some lemon juice, some apple cider vinegar (which you won’t need today), a pack of cheapie white handkerchiefs (or use several layers of cheesecloth if you have it), and salt. Everything else I already had at home – a lidded pot big enough to hold a gallon of milk, a colander, a bowl big enough for the colander to sit in, a spoon, and a thermometer that I forgot to include in this photo, but if you scroll on down, you’ll see the kind I use.
(Fun fact – do you know how many Walmarts there are in the state of Alaska? NINE.)
You may also want to have some herbs and spices on hand to experiment with. I like dill, parsley, garlic, and pepper best but have also been known to use paprika, taco seasoning, jelly and honey.
I picked the super-duper easiest recipe for cheese that I could find. Well, actually, straining yogurt to make yogurt cheese is easiest, but I want you to have more satisfaction in your creating than just that, so we’ll start with [drumroll, please] LEMON CHEESE.
This recipe is so forgiving it’s like it doesn’t even care. You very nearly cannot mess this up.
You’ll need a gallon of whole milk (not skim or 2%), a half cup of lemon juice, and some salt to taste. That’s it. Make sure your equipment is very clean, and boil the handkerchief to get it sterilized. It’s good to form proper habits now while you’re learning, and it will be easier to keep them going when you advance to fancier aged cheeses.
Pour your milk into your pot and heat it to anywhere between 185° and 200°F. Seriously, anywhere in that range, as long as you do not let the milk simmer and certainly don’t let it boil.
When your milk is up to temperature, turn off the heat and slowly add the lemon juice, stirring constantly. The milk will gradually separate into thready curds which will become clumps of curd, and clear slightly yellowish whey. Put the lid on the pot and let the curds and whey sit undisturbed for about 15 minutes.
Line the colander with the clean white handkerchief and spoon the curds and whey into it. Put a big bowl under the colander to catch the whey and use it for baking bread. Or feed it to your chickens. Or dump it on your compost pile. Tie the corners of the hankie together and rig yourself up some way to hang the bundle so that it can further drain (I use a rubber band looped around my cabinet doors). Don’t forget to put a bowl under the hanging curds because it will still drain for a while. Keep that whey for a few more minutes until you know if you’ll need it or not, and I’ll explain why you might want it. Let the curds drain for as long as you like – a half hour for a moist spreadable cheese, or up to two hours for a drier, crumblier cheese. If you accidentally get your cheese drier than you would have preferred, stir a little of the reserved whey back into the cheese until it’s as moist as you’d like. See? So forgiving, this cheese.
Case in point – in the photo below, you can see my cheese curds after I put them in a bowl and broke them up after they’d been draining for a while. Too dry! So I added some of the whey back in and stirred it up until it was moist and spreadable, just like I like it. Now’s the time to add the salt to your own taste. If you don’t like salty cheese, only add a little, but do add salt. Otherwise your cheese will taste like vaguely lemony milk. Salt brings out the flavors and makes it yummy. Start with, say, 1/8 teaspoon of salt and work your way up. If you like really salty cheese, feel free to add more. Salt, stir, taste, adjust.
The cheese is ready to eat now or anytime within the next week to ten days. We like it plain on crackers with a little hot pepper jelly, or with some herbs mixed in. You can see here that I’ve taken this same basic cheese and used it two ways. On the left, as a cold spread, on some crostini with parsley on top. On the right, drizzled with olive oil and warmed in a 400°F oven until bubbly around the edges.
Check out these appetizers! Top: dill and pepper. Right: in a ring of marinara. Left: garlic and honey with honey drizzled on top. All warmed in the oven. Delicious, I’m telling ya.
Now, why am I calling these lessons “No Excuses”? Because I’m going to talk you out of your thoughts that you can’t do this. You can.
- Think you don’t have enough time? Start to finish, this took me about an hour and a half. And it’s not like it took a lot of my brainpower, either. I just needed to pay attention so I didn’t overheat the milk and that was literally the hardest part.
- Think you need expensive ingredients or tools? I paid Alaska prices and made over a pound and a half of fresh cheese for just over $5. The milk was $3.38 on 2/3/2018, I used about a dollar’s worth of lemon juice, a few pennies’ worth of salt, and a forty-cent white handkerchief. I buy 13-packs of hankies at WalMart which cost $5/pack at the time of this writing.
- Think you need a goat? Or a cow? Or access to raw milk? Nope, I bought the least-expensive gallon of milk I could buy at the grocery store. And it worked. The only type of milk you can’t use is nut milk or UHT (ultra-high temperature pasteurized) milk.
- Think it’s too easy to mess up the recipe? No, not at all. This lemon cheese recipe gives you a temperature range of anywhere between 185° – 200°F, a draining time of anywhere from a half hour to two hours, the chance to add moisture back in if you drain it for too long, and mix-ins limited only by your imagination.
- Think you’ll only be able to make this one kind of cheese at home, and you’ll get bored with it? Not with me to help you learn! We’ll also be making an Indian non-melting cheese called panir that is awesome in stir fries, and whole-milk ricotta for lasagna or desserts. So stay tuned! And be sure to let me know how your lemon cheese turns out!
UPDATE: My friend, who is a first-time cheesemaker, made this recipe today and has some observations we both agree you might benefit from. This cheese looks (and eats) a lot like ricotta. It’s not a proper ricotta, but that reference might help you know what you’re looking for as the curds form, and some ideas for how to use it once you make it. This isn’t a melty cheese and will still have a lot of body when used in recipes, like a ricotta does. She also suggested that you try out some different types of salt – smoked salt, pink salt, etc. – for more flavors, and divide the batch up into smaller portions like I did and experiment with different spices and herbs as well as different salts. This cheese is bland without the salt, so be sure to use enough to please your own palate. And of course, enjoy!
