Making cheese at home / yogurt /using the whey

sunnysmile

Hi friends, many questions and a few topics overlapping here ...

I love the pot cheese they have at my local Fairway store, and have begun researching how to make cheese at home. It doesn't look that hard but I have never done it. I guess it involves milk and acid, heating and straining curds from the whey. He anyone tried this, knows the calories or WW points, or has interest in learning and sharing recipes?

I also have been reading about how to make greek yogurt from scratch which I read is also easy and lower in cost. I have drained regular yogurt in past years to make thicker "yogurt cheese" but not greek yogurt from scratch. Has anyone done that either? What do you do with the leftover whey?

We could post recipes we've tried and our success and failure. I think it could be a good cost saver with not too much effort (needed during this tough employment time)

Husbands computer just froze up, what do you know, have to go solve that before figuring out the fun of eating homemade!

-Sunny

weevil66

I will root around and see if I can find the recipe I used to use to make yogurt. I made it in the crockpot and then after it reached temp and I mixed it with the starter I set it sit in the oven overnight. Strained it a couple times after it had set.

2shoes123

bumping - I've made yogurt by heating milk in microwave to temp of 185 degrees then cool to 120 degrees then added yogurt, placed in oven overnight with light on. Straining made it thicker but not quite greek texture.

Oriole15

Easiest cheese to make is paneer. You heat up the milk and when it reaches boiling point you add a bit of lemon juice. Strain the curds in a bit of muslin cloth. Press and cube - although you can also crumble it an mix with a bit of rose water and honey and sprinkle pistachios on top.

If you go the rennet route the results are more unpredictable but I know people who have had good results making mozzarella,

Don't throw the whey away, you can use it in place of water when making bread. Makes it keep longer.

Oriole15

I was going to add that I am not convinced that making your own yoghurt is any cheaper than buying it. I can buy Turkish/Greek style plain yoghurt for £1.70 a kg pot and as low as £1.39 a kg when it's on offer.

By the time I buy milk + add the cost of electricity to keep it at the correct temperature + discount the batches that just don't set properly because the starter was spent it really doesn't seem worth it. Especially if I then strain it to make it thicker.

At least with bread the taste difference makes it worth the effort, with yoghurt, not so much.

sunnysmile

Wow, thanks for the responses. I found this interesting link for the cheese making, shows step by step. One of the comments at this link said is you use lime instead of lemon it's paneer. Some people use white vinegar or a mixture of that with lean.

http://honeyrockdawn.com/2011/06/truly-easy-homemade-cheese/


Do you think we can use nonfat or low fat milk to make the cheese? Has anyone let it drain until it was hard. What spices or seasonings do you add to it? And how do you tore it? I read somewhere you can freeze the whey?

sunnysmile

I am going to try this soon!

ElizabethKalmbach

I made about 100 lbs of hard cheese and many gallons of yogurt last year.

You can get most of your cheese making supplies and cultures online. I use getculture.com but they are certainly not the only place to go. (They just happen to be up the road from me, so I avoid shipping costs.)

I would recommend a farmer's cheese as a first attempt hard cheese that doesn't require an extensive amount of equipment to make.

Mozzarella is unpredictable, but low in equipment requirement if you can get it to work for you.

Greek yogurt is just regular yogurt strained. I make my yogurt about half a gallon at a time and strain off the whey for thicker yogurt. I use the whey to make bread.

gpfan5

would love to get your Greek yogurt recipe! I don't even like "regular" yogurt anymore. I love the liberte yogurts especially. Thank you and good luck with your cheese!

Illona88

Paneer is really easy to make.
Just boil some milk, add lemon juice. Strain it, cool it. Done.


I think other cheeses need a lot more patience and ingredients.

ElizabethKalmbach

I use a yolife yogurt maker to make my base yogurt starting from a freeze dried culture. I never use the tiny jars they sent with. I just pour half a gallon of milk into a tupperware container and make it all in one big batch. It takes about a day for that much milk to properly culture, then I put the tub in the fridge for about 12 hours to congeal. After that, I pour it gently into a muslin bag which I hang from a hook in my kitchen for 12 hours to drain. If you are concerned about "germs," this might not be the hobby for you. If you like wild cultures and homesteading type activities, you'll dig this.

When you hang your yogurt up to strain, remember to use a spatula to scrape the thick yogurt away from the muslin every hour or two so that you don't get watery yogurt in the middle and dry yogurt on the outside.

sunnysmile

Great info when you make pot cheese, which I guess if farmers cheese, does it come out good with lowest or fat free milk? Trying to figure out the calorie differences for using whole milk, which I think would be delicious! Do you add salt to the milk, or later after the curdling?

ElizabethKalmbach

Reducing the milk fat will make a cheese with a different texture. Mozz works OK as a low fat cheese, but I've never really bothered to make cheese with anything less than 2% milk. The less fat that is in the cheese the more... translucent and squeaky it is. Other than that, cheese making is mostly protein manipulation, and the protein levels in milk don't really change much between types of milk. Due to the lower fat content, you will get a lower yield of cheese per gallon of milk.

ElizabethKalmbach

Also, you don't salt until you've got your curds ready for the press, for the most part. Salting kills the bacteria that make the cheese flavorful. The sooner you salt, the milder your cheese will taste. The later you salt the sharper your cheese will be.

2old2befat

Bumping for later- I must make this cheese!

Panda_1999

Good topic, thanks :flowerforyou: I have been thinking of trying to make my own Greek yogurt, but with the cost of milk these days I'm not sure it would be cheaper than buying my Chobani. :glasses:

Shari325

I purchase yogurt culture from New England Cheese Making.
I reculture (use a small amount of yogurt to inoculate the next batch) for two or three batches and then start with a fresh packet of freeze dried culture. I get the most consistent results this way. My homemade yogurt, using skim milk and non fat milk powder is not as thick as Greek yogurt, but it is just as creamy.
I consume homemade Kefir and yogurt every day. I plan to attempt making mozzarella or a hard cheese in the near future.

You asked about calories. The way I understand it, the bacteria culture you add to make yogurt consumes some of the lactose and coverts it to protein. So the carbohydrate to protein ratio changes slightly, but the calorie count will remain essentially the same. So I log my yogurt for the same calories as the milk I used to make it. This is close enough for me.

When straining off whey, for cheese or greek yogurt, I find an item in the MFP database that was produced in similar fashion and use that for logging. Example: I made some ricotta with 2% milk. I logged it as part-skim ricotta from the database. Again, this is close enough for my calculations.

broox80

Thats whey too much damn work. Tee hee hee!!!

SyntonicGarden

Both yogurt and pot cheese are easy. You'll probably need a starter for the yogurt if you don't already have one. I did my first batch in mason jars (that I kept warm by wrapping in towels and putting in a cooler - cheesecloth over the opening to keep stuff out) and a starter that I got at the local health food store. I bought the supplies for making more complicated cheeses from New England Cheesemaking as well. If you go that route, be sure to check for online coupon codes or deals.

Pot cheese is milk, usually lemon juice or vinegar, and salt. There are plenty of easy recipes online. Just make sure you have a thermometer. The comment about the salt is spot on and very important.

Pearlyladybug

Pinterest have some good cheese making recipes!

sunnysmile

Do you think it makes a difference if I use vinegar, lemon juice, or lime juice for the acid for making the pot cheese? I mean regarding the flavor of the cheese itself? My husband buys so many limes (huge bag) that I figured that might be the easiest way to try first but am not overly fond of lime flavor (as compared to lemon). My husband is sure that this won't work but I told him he will be surprised! I read somewhere about taking the whey from making the pot cheese and then using that to make ricotta cheese, but somehow that seems too good to be true to be able to get cheese twice from same ingredient, but it had something to do with letting it sit for 12 hours? I may have misread it on I think wiki site.

I was thinking about milk price comment. I know it is expensive, maybe Costco milk will be less? I have been paying $4.99 pound for the fresh pot cheese and am thinking that making it might be less expensive but also great fun (and tasty!)